About Sarah B.

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A plant scientist by formal training, she has growing expertise in regenerative ecosystems and their impacts on food quality for the benefit of farmers and their allies. She came to cacao in 1998 via academia, and for 13 years trained under several internationally known scientists at the (then) Cocoa Research Unit, Trinidad. Working on various internationally funded projects ranging from cacao pathology to agronomy, diversity and post-harvest processing under their guidance, she began to build the firm foundation for her current work with cacao from soil to processed, saleable seed.

From 2011 - 2016, her volunteer contributions as a freelance cacao services provider and paid part-time field ecologist, continued to increase her practical expertise. In 2012, thanks to a very serendipitous initial encounter with Gino Dalla Gasperina (Meridian Cacao Co.) and Charley Wheelock (Woodblock Chocolate) in Trinidad, her real-time adventures with, and knowledge of cacao began to add new dimensions. Through collaborative efforts with them, she began learning the business ropes of cacao on the international market.

Barely 4 years later the Trinidad Microlot Project would be launched, and the work would become even more intense, exciting and multi-dimensional. Starting with a mere handful of cacao producers, they began to unveil and share with international chocolate makers exclusive cacao microlots that were previously never explored in Trinidad’s history, at single estate level across the entire country. Together, with the commitment of the cacao producers to improve their on-farm cacao quality with Sarah’s guidance, this collaboration pioneered redefining cacao sourcing at origin in Trinidad. Within 4 years, the Trinidad Microlot Project has seen its farmer outreach expand from 6 originally interested farmers, to more than 60 - thanks to the enjoyable, collaborative effort she has established with the Cocoa Production and Quality team of field officers at the Cocoa Development Company of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd (CDCTTL). Alongside them, her outreach efforts are magnified so that the teaching and training of ‘quality first’ reaches those who are committed to improving their production and earning portfolio.

In these 4 years, Meridian’s chocolate maker clients (and by extension their customers) have become increasingly satisfied with the unique offerings that the Trinidad Microlot Project has been able to provide. Some of these microlots have helped international chocolate makers win gold and silver accolades for the chocolates prepared from these exclusive lots. Collectively, all of this international exposure has helped to bring long-overdue attention to the smallholder farmers who are the stewards of these beautiful and delicious beans.

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In 2018, microlot farmers who had benefited from Sarah’s ongoing investment in their post-harvest process training for several months/years, made history first at the local level by ranking in the top 20 out of 50 competitors in Trinidad’s first annual National Cocoa Awards. Four of these farmers were counted among the top 5 in the country. Their beans were then submitted to the Cocoa of Excellence programme (Paris) for further evaluation for the 2019 awards. Three of these farmers then had the enormous pleasure of seeing their beans selected among the top 50 best beans in the world. Two of these three later succeeded in being included in the top 20 best beans in the world, and they represented 2 of 5 regional farms that won for the Latin America/Caribbean region. Naturally, this created well-deserved, tremendous hype for the smallholder farmers involved, and brought new focused energy to the local producing space. Since then, many more farmers have embraced the personal responsibility for their learning and improvement in the cacao producing and processing space. And their enthusiasm is fueling greater farmer entrepreneurship at origin in a way that Trinidad needs in order to create a new legacy surrounding its cacao industry.

 It is therefore with tremendous humility and excitement that Sarah continues to improve her own diverse skillsets in order to better serve the farming community. Though her current focus uses chocolate made from the farmers’ own beans as part of her sensory training toolkit during individual or group sessions, her mission is always one of wider integration of all sensory-based knowledge that can be derived from the farm space. In this way, her work deepens the farmers’ appreciation for the tremendous responsibilities that they have as producers and primary processors in the cacao domain. And their work together to optimize post-harvest processing becomes deeply rewarding on multiple layers for everyone involved. Thanks to the growing interest of small and large producers both in Trinidad and the Caribbean region, she continues to collaborate with fellow industry partners to develop and apply field-based methods that encourage effective combinations of the current science of cacao, ecosystem diversity and sensory engagement for producers and chocolate makers alike. With such an approach, they work together in a language that each partner readily understands, and with techniques that they can easily adopt to continue improving their own work with cacao and the wider agricultural space.