Woody Tasch

In terms of money and the flow of capital through complex securities, millisecond computer trades, and financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, trillions means mind-numbing. In terms of microbes and life in the soil, trillions means teeming.

In times of war, we’ve always had conscientious objectors. In times of economic and political befuddlement, can we encourage a corps of conscientious investors?

Soil is incredibly complex. Just as with the human microbiome project, there is so much we have yet to discover. If we want to fix climate change, the answer is literally right beneath our feet. Da Vinci had it right when he said we understand the movements of the heavens better than we understand what is happening underfoot. We understand the soil at an intuitive level but not at a practical level.

We can’t all be Noam Chomsky or Ayn Rand or Wendell Berry or Bingo Pajama, but that doesn’t mean each and every one of us can’t get the hint. We need a new story. Maybe even a new myth. We need to rediscover imagination. Imagination that enables us to reckon our whereabouts in a world that is heating up and speeding up.

These days I’m focused on the true cost of food. We have the cheapest food in the world. Food purchases make up something like 8% of our GDP. But when you start to factor in all the chronic diseases and environmental impacts—the health footprint of food—then all of a sudden we have the most expensive food in the world. Not 8% but 25% or higher. How is it we have something that is so cheap but so expensive?

"People get buried in a blizzard of financial terms that obfuscates—makes opaque—what is going on, furthers the paradigm of, “We’ll just take care of you. Here are the reports—full of jargon and charts and analytics that are virtually meaningless to you."