I am have been sitting in the Slow Money Alliance conference in Santa Fe for a day and half now. Many of the pioneers in the good food movement have shared their stories and insights related to the current paradigm of wealth creation and its impact on the planet and its ecological systems. The overarching message that I hear is that we must reframe our sense of return on investment. We can no longer afford to expect huge financial returns when that means degradation of soil, plants, animals, humans and communities. We must broaden the spectrum of expected returns to include regeneration of human and community health. Health must be part of wealth.

I have been struck by lack of specificity in defining what the alternative return regime will look like. Several times yesterday, people asked in different ways: what kind of financial return shall we seek in Slow Money? In other words, in current market conditions, what can we – the good food movement of entrepreneurs – offer to investors that will still attract money? Several answers were offered indicating that clarity has not been reached. Tom Miller, a co-founder and board member of the Slow Money Alliance, said roughly, we cannot define that number. It depends. At one point, Slow Money’s primary founder and voice, Woody Tasch, said 4%. Kristine Martinez, founder of Angeles with Attitude, a Santa Fe based investor association, said it will be different based on the goals and desires of the businesses and investors. Eric Becker, vice president of Trillium Asset Management, a socially responsible investment entity, said the returns “will” be lower than market rate.

These answers are not the kind that seasoned, professional investors, who hold to the financial paradigm that currently predominates, like to hear. During this dialog among financial professionals seeking to create a new way to finance young companies, the audience became the most animated it would be all day. Why? Because this question of return and what is sustainable is the core of the question that Slow Money offers to all humans today.

For me it was a classic moment of paradigm shift. We cannot answer the new question using the old frames. Return on investment (ROI) is an old frame. It forces us to ask the question, what is capital? The first definition found on the web and offered by Google is “assets available for use in the production of further assets.” That is actually a nice definition, devoid of extraneous concepts like wealth accumulation, which is a value that has become a religion in our day. Slow Money is really asking us to question the current axiom that ROI or return on capital should be 20-25%, which is the rough average that venture capitalists seek because you will double your money every 3-4 years. Clearly, the Slow Money answers offered yesterday do not provide those returns. Slow Money is asking us to accumulate less wealth and to regenerate more health, but it has not clarified the spectrum of returns that can be captured in an investment product in a compelling way.

This reality clarifies that traditional investors are not likely to be the key to Slow Money’s future. Ari Derfel, founder of the restaurant/salon Terrain in Berkeley, actually called it out. He along with Kyra Pincheira, a young food entrepreneur said we need to look to a larger base of individuals who care less about a high return and care more about construction of new system. But as Greg Steltenpohl, founder of Odwalla and Adina beverage companies, said, working with dozens of small equity investors when starting a company is a good way to quickly burn out an entrepreneur trying to innovate. Starting a company is hard enough without answering to dozens of additional bosses, which equity investors become. So a financial intermediary is required, a means of aggregating the small investments of thousands of people seeking to fuel the needed innovation in the food system.

Having been involved with Slow Money for several years now, I have heard many scenarios for start up. All have merit. All might work, but we cannot know for certain until we begin to implement. I hope that by the end of today it will become clear that this is the near term goal of the Slow Money Alliance. We will not actually get to the specificity required to make real the concept unless we wade into the deep pool of the unknown and actually begin to swim. Like the entrepreneurs Slow Money seeks to finance with supportive terms, Slow Money’s founders must become risk takers now to form a structure and begin aggregating money.