By Jacob Olander – The Amazon River draws together the waters of nearly half of South America. Recently those waters were the venue for a remarkable meeting, drawing together chefs, social entrepreneurs, writers, scientists, conservationists and business people to chart a course for the future of food from, and for, the Amazon. […]
Read More… from Building a Food Movement from, and for, the Amazon
Rows of combines roll in formation across regimented soybean fields. In the Brazilian Amazon, thousands of square kilometers have been cleared for the production of soy and beef for export. This is one way of producing food from the rainforest. But there are other ways. In Peru, an Awajun farmer tends her farm in the rainforest. […]
On a Saturday afternoon in late September in the Peruvian jungle town of Satipo, Jonatan Ayala Lombardi offers up a chocolate surprise. Jonatan is the general manager of the Satipo Cooperative, which sells hundreds of tons of cacao and coffee from its 620 farmer members from this frontier region where the Andes meld into the Amazon lowlands. […]
Read More… from Fine Cacao is Booming. Fine Cacao is Vanishing.
From the sizzle in a pan, to the feel of cracking open a piece of salak, to the aroma and composition of a dish that, in the hands of the right chef, is best understood as art—culinary culture and much more were on display this year in Latitud Cero, the premier gastronomic congress in Quito. […]
Read More… from Shortening the Distance to the World of Sustainable Gastronomy
La vida de un producto se enaltece en el arte de ponerlo en la mesa a disposición del paladar. Con el interés de robustecer los enlaces desde los orígenes hasta el consumidor final, hemos visto en Canopy Bridge la importancia de la gastronomía en apoyo de la sostenibilidad. […]
Canopy Bridge founder Marta Echavarría was at the 2015 Casa de Chocolate and Cacao de Oro Awards in Bogotá. On September 18th, Swisscontact, a corporation working in economic development, held their third Casa de Chocolate and Cacao de Oro Awards, showcasing and celebrating the exciting expansion of high quality Colombian cacao. […]
Read More… from The Right Taste at the Right Time: The Future of Colombian Cacao
If only work could always be so sweet! Our co-founder, Marta Echavarria, traveled to Peru and brought back samples of some of the finest chocolate available. The country is undergoing very significant growth in its chocolate industry and carefully crafted confections are on the rise. In order to learn more about what Peru has to offer and educate our palates, we conducted a blind tasting. We invited chocolate expert Lourdes Paez […]
Tourists returning from Andean South America will usually sport some sort of “alpaca item”: gloves, sweaters, hats, socks, all with pre-columbian-style designs, inevitably including the form of an alpaca. However, buyers rarely glimpse the truth behind this iconic industry—that the alpaca as well the artisans who work with a centuries-old tradition are in peril. But, like in centuries past, alpacas fit perfectly into the Andean environment and the needs of our modern lifestyles. Thanks to the efforts of two Ecuadorian initiatives, it is reappearing, […]
Read More… from Alpaca: Sustainable Futures from Past Cultures
We recently worked with a Shanghai-based startup, Cambio Coffee, to connect them with sustainable producer groups as they searched for new partners in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. We joined up with Cambio Coffee’s Sebastián and Felipe Martin for part of their trip when they visited Quito and the Galapagos Islands. Cambio Coffee is a growing social enterprise dedicated to creating a positive impact on the environment and farming communities in Latin America […]
In Noli, a small comune in Liguria, Italy, Thomas Jefferson reports that you’ll find “a miserable tavern, but they can give you good fish viz. sardines, fresh anchovies, [etc.] and probably strawberries; perhaps too Ortolans.” In Rozzano, a comune in Milan, he recommends that you “ask for Mascarponi, a rich and excellent kind of curd, and enquire how it is made.” […]
Read More… from Thomas Jefferson: The Founding Father of… Gastronomic Tourism?
