In this Food Makers & Changers interview, we get to know one of Canada’s great food producers & leaders, ChocoSol’s own Michael Sacco!
About ChocoSol: ChocoSol Traders is a learning community/social enterprise. We focus on making stone ground chocolate foods and stone ground maize products. We also import and locally roast one of the lowest emission lowest food mile coffees in Canada.
What is one change you’d like to see happen within the food system and why?
I would like to see more support for small plot intensive agriculture, and see how that overlaps with urban agriculture education initiatives tied into social enterprises.
If you could only have three vegetables for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Maize, squash and beans
What has been your most meaningful and rewarding work to date?
Being a father of 3 children under 3. And co-producing the chocolate exhibit at Hamiltion’s Royal Botanical Gardens
If you could only have one non-local food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Chocolate!
Where do you stand on local vs organic vs simply eating whole foods? What are your personal priorities when it comes to your own diet?
I try to expand the concept of local to trans-local, because our birds and butterflies migrate to places we bring our products from. I try to expand local to include the concept of food miles and emissions as our trans-local products pedal powered to markets can have less food miles and emissions than some local energy intensive products. Basically, we believe that part of the regeneration of our land and imagination will come from thinking about America as a continent and not just divided up into nation states, it will come from a cross-pollination of ideas and Indigenous Knowledges blended with techniques and technologies for a changing world.
What would surprise most people about your history with food (and/or embarassing food stories)?
I/we started off as a technologist roasting cacao and coffee with pure sunlight.
Who do you most admire in the food movement?
What is your favourite season and why?
Fall…..harvest, thanksgiving, and days of the dead, combined with the return to school and workshop season.
Do you have any advice for newcomers to the food movement, and how they can make a contribution?
Reclaim and regenerate the rituals of growing and making food, that make present the spirit of a re-generative agriculture and not merely a sustainable one…..be creative and eco-preneurial……defy the logic of economic truisms….and renew the marketplace with different visions of how it could be….the crisis of today is actually really the crisis of imagination.
Do you have any advice for veterans of the food movement?
We can do anything when we work together. We can do nothing when we work against each other. Don’t be so judgmental, and learn to roll with the community and collaborators through co-motion and establishing the good mind.
A quick summary of your approach to community development
ChocoSol is about embodying the change we wish for the world. It is about a group of people exercising their creativity through their work that strengthens their dignity.
Favourite junkfood?
Popcorn! covered in salted chocolate and sweetened with maple sugar.