Recently Rated:
Wednesday February 6 2013, 8:00 AM
at Heritage Radio Network Studio @ Roberta's Pizza, Moore St, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
Added By: Clay
at Heritage Radio Network Studio @ Roberta's Pizza, Moore St, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
Added By: Clay
Marc is the founder of Choctal, the makers of the first single-origin chocolate ice cream line in the US. Choctal expanded to create a complementary line of single-origin vanillas.
While in Costa Rica, Marc met David Gardella, who has been working to teach farmers to interplant vanilla on their cocoa plantations. Good cocoa might fetch a farmer $1400-$4000/MT, but vanilla is currently at about $50 per kilo, or about $50,000/MT. David has a nursery and provides technical and other assistance as well as providing a guaranteed market/buyer.
Marc, David, and VEC have embarked on a project called the Oxygen Farming Foundation, with the first project in Haiti. If deforestation is part of the problem of climate change (due to cutting down trillions of trees in the past 50 years) then planting trees is a good thing. Combining cocoa and vanilla on a single farm provides the economic incentive to plant and grow trees, not cut them down.
