Food Connect Foundation is proud to present “Regenerating Investment in Place Based Business, Communities and Regions” with Christopher Houghton Budd. The series of events and workshops will be held from May 4-6 at the Food Connect Shed in Brisbane, including a Gala Dinner to celebrate the foundation’s 20 years of being a social enterprise.
“The economics of today’s food system are, sadly, broken beyond repair. Its so-called ‘hidden costs’ are harming our health and degrading our planet, while also worsening global inequalities. Changing the ways we produce and consume food will be critical to tackling climate change, protecting biodiversity, and building a better future. It is time for radical change.”
— Sir Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
Today’s world is increasingly uncertain, with geopolitical disruptions and “cozzie livs” causing businesses major headaches. Markets have not served us well, with major corporations caught out profiteering while using inflation as the decoy. Business stands at the epicentre of a potential solution but is restrained on all sides by abstract finance and social arrangements that suppress its potency.
Triple bottom line accounting standards and a plethora of new approaches (BCorp, impact investment, social enterprise, regenerative farming) are searching for a way through the malaise but struggle against the momentum of an old system intent on kicking the can down the road.
For the most part, the drivers of how we all do business are at the mercy of a system that perpetuates the problems we are valiantly trying to solve, and in fact, work directly against our best endeavours.
For funders, corpuses with 95% of funds invested in the old model are a massive impediment despite “impact” funds increasing their corpus allocation. However, they are wedded to a risk adjusted return formula detached from the true essence of economic life, and the unrealised potential of what our deepest humanity can unfold in service of community.
Event Details
The series of events and workshops will provide a rare opportunity to hear from one of the world’s most critical thinkers and writers in finance, economics and investment, Christopher Houghton Budd.
The workshops will consider practical, non-abstract approaches to business and investing that gives economics an unexpected vitality, fires the imagination and quickens the soul. With this approach, economics could, after all, lose its reputation as ‘the dismal science’ and provide a foundation for cultural renewal.
Sunday, 4 May 2025
An evening with Christopher Houghton Budd: The Circulation of Capital
Referencing 20 years of Food Connect, this will be a performative presentation on the history of money and banking and why we’re still in a mess post-GFC. This presentation will run for one hour with time for Q&A, followed by delicious canapés.
Monday, 5 May 2025
Workshop 1: True Trading: The Heart of Economic Life with Christopher Houghton Budd
This is for entrepreneurs and business owners. Discover how ‘true cost’ should be determined in a real-world economy. Topics covered include:
- Business at the heart of economic life
- Legal structures and ‘governance’
- True price formula as a condition of sustainability
- Use of profits
- Three kinds of money
- Money as bookkeeping and bookkeeping as money
Food Connect Foundation Fundraising Dinner: “Stories of Possibility” featuring special guest, Dr Amanda Cahill in conversation with Rebecca Gorman
Celebrate 20 years of Food Connect over a delicious, regeneratively sourced dinner with guest speaker, Dr Amanda Cahill from The Next Economy who will be in conversation with Rebecca Gorman. They’ll tease out the stories of communities all around the country who are doing economics differently.
This dinner is for investors, philanthropists and Food Connect ‘Careholders’ interested in funding the transformation of our food system.
Tuesday, 6 May 2025
Workshop 2: True Investing – Unsuppressing capital for a vital economy with Christopher Houghton Budd.
This is for funders, impact investors and philanthropists. Learn how investing in an economy that is associative can achieve an equitable and prosperous future for all. Topics covered include:
- Enjoying uncertainty
- Supporting the imagination and autonomy of the entrepreneur
- Associative accounting
- The corporation as a thing of beauty
- The emancipation of capital
- Equity and imagination
- New money from the future vs abstract passive income
- Land, leasing and liquidity
- Succession – Enabling the next generation
Get your tickets
For more information and tickets to the event, “Regenerating Investment in Place Based Business, Communities and Regions” click here.
For those just wanting to attend the 20 years of Food Connect Fundraising Dinner, tickets can be purchased here.