EVERYONE LOVES CHOCOLATE! SCALING THE PRODUCTION OF AMAZONIAN COCOA TO STRENGTHEN LOCAL RESILIENCE AND REDUCE DEFORESTATION PRESSURE
December 1st, 2022 at 12:30pm ET
What is the status of the Amazonian cocoa market? What is its potential as a transition crop to recover degraded soils? Join us to learn about overcoming select challenges of Amazonian cocoa, including: flavor profile, disease, indigenous varietals vs more popular ones, and more. What is the opportunity to be premium or commodity only? Can Amazon branded cocoa differentiate itself? Join us to discuss these questions and learn which products use cocoa.
Vitor Stella
CocoaAction Brasil / World Cocoa Foundation
Agronomical Engineer graduated from the University of São Paulo (ESALQ/USP), with an MBA in Agribusiness and a Masters in Coffee Science and Economics (Università degli Studi di Trieste – Ernesto Illy Foundation, Italy) with studies focused in agroforestry systems with coffee. Vitor currently works as a consultant at P&A, overseeing coffee and cocoa precompetitive initiatives focused on sustainability at field-level (aimed at the prosperity and social well-being of small farmers and their communities in Brazil).
Felipe Faria
Partnerships for Forests
Based in São Paulo, Felipe works at SYSTEMIQ and is the Latin America regional manager at Partnerships for Forests (P4F). P4F is an incubator/accelerator funded by the UK government that supports innovative businesses that deliver improved land use management and forest protection. Felipe is passionate about working with teams to structure and solve problems related to sustainable value chains, forest protection, energy, water, cities, climate change, technology, and education.
Kate Cavallin
Cocoa Latitudes / UK
Kate Cavallin is General Manager for Cocoa Latitudes. Kate began her adventures in cocoa as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic where she worked with a cooperative of organic cocoa farmers. With her house right next door to the processing facility of the coop, she literally lived and breathed cocoa. During her time in the DR she was lucky enough to learn how to ship cocoa beans by air, container freight and even by sailboat! She has been working with Ecom since 2011, where she set up the Ecuador cocoa sourcing operation Agroarriba S.A. applying the skills learned on a small scale in the DR, especially the importance of the direct farmer relationship. Agroarriba buys direct from farmers as well as provides cutting edge technology and technical assistance to help improve yields and farmer livelihoods.
Tucker Garrison
Imlak’esh Organics
Tucker co-founded CHi Foods in 2021, after ten years pioneering novel plant-based proteins around the globe. He is a serial entrepreneur who founded his first company at the age of 13. An avid regenerative agriculture practitioner, surfer, global traveler, and eco-social entrepreneur, Tucker co-founded Imlak’esh Organics in 2012.
Solange Rodriguez
Partnerships for Forests
Solange is an accountant specliazed in Sustainable finance and a nature lover. Since 2008 she has been working as an international advisor focused on business straregy, finance, esg and sustainable development. She is a Project Officer of Partnerships for Forests, a programme that aims to bring about transformational change in how the private sector values forests. Our teams around the world use grants and technical assistance to ensure that the private sector, public sector, and communities can achieve shared value from sustainable value land use. P4F, which is funded by the UK Government, supports projects across some of the world’s most significant – tropical forest regions: West, Central and East Africa, South East Asia, and Latin America.
