Kneading Conference 2024

Woody will share excerpts from his most recent book, A Call To Farms, exploring the nexus between the food movement and the peace movement.  Wait. . .Is there a peace movement? The underlying issue is, of course, the violence of the modern economy--explicit violence of the military-industrial kind, and insidious harm, social and ecological, done in the name of economic growth and wealth creation. For the past 15 years, the slow money movement has been encouraging locally led, informal community efforts around the country (and, as of two months ago, Israel) to provide below-market, even 0%, loans to small, diversified, organic farms and local food businesses. Slow Money Maine has been one of the leading nodes in this small, beautiful movement. So, it is with great pleasure that I look forward to reconnecting with friends I haven't seen in a number of years and making new ones, celebrating the progress of Maine Grains and the work of all promoting heritage grain, artisanal bread and local food systems. (Space must mean not only cyberspace and going to Mars, but also creating new kinds of economic space in which we can bring money back down to earth, enabling the local, the small and the slow to flourish.)