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Vendor Notebook

A Farmer's Market Update for ChocoSol:

Horizontal Traders in Toronto's Markets

posted August 16, 2007

A food relationship and a relationship to food 5 years in the making. Below is a point form analysis of the essential elements of our work and dimensions of our products.

1) Our cacao purchasing works similarly to a community supported agriculture project to support indigenous farmers with fair prices and knowledge sharing. Our relationship with the community of San Felipe began when we were asked by the community to bring a solar roaster to the jungle in order to teach them how to develop chocolate processing.

2) We make chocolate foods and not chocolate candies, and we strive to make them both delicious and nutritious. Our specialty is drinking chocolate, but we also make chocolate power bars and import a variety of other durable goods from communities in Southern Mexico. We mix these ingredients with local flavours, to create regional blends, and in doing so we support other members of the market community.

3) We support ecological production methods, minimize food miles, promote agro-ecological techniques and green technologies, and strive to minimize packaging.

4) By working directly with the primary producers we can better support culture, tradition and ecology directly and in ways that are not dependent upon the fluctuations of the global markets.

5) Furthermore, there is an element of interculturality in work, which acknowledges and respects the distinctness and cultural otherness of our Mexican friends. Through this project we promote intercultural encounters and dialogues that are reciprocal and not patronizing.

6) As a social enterprise in Toronto we utilize pedal power, not only for transporting our goods to the farmer's markets, but also to process the cacao into chocolate. In the past 8 months 1.8 tonnes of cacao were ground using a bicycle grinder.

7) Since the arrival of our first container of goods in August of 2006 ChocoSol horizontal traders and chocolatiers has transformed into a learning community here in Toronto known to insiders as the chocosolistas. At our many chocolatadas we have found a way to host civil society, the arts, and convivial gatherings through chocolate celebrations of many kinds: speak easy, poetry, concert pianists and sopranos, catered raw dinner parties, auction and charity fundraisers, and more....

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Chocosol Toronto is the product of the friendship and research of Michael Sacco, and Graham Corbett in Oaxaca Mexico. Our friendship grew there and was strengthened by our mutual love of Southern Mexico's civil society ethos. Graham was working as an agro-ecologist, and Michael worked as an intercultural technologist for many years each in Southern Mexico.

We believe that we are sharing more than more merchandise. By bringing high quality symbolic products to market our work as social investigators and intercultural bridge makers is made possible. In this sense the products are both means and ends for the unfolding of our work on both sides.

The products are symbolic of: ethics and environmentalism, culture and history, nutrition and the art of living and dying, civil society and social co-motion.

The products are symbolic of a rainbow of values and offered at a fair price. Good food, Slow Food as many call it, should not be too expensive for anyone! That being said, chocolate vanilla, coffee and other products that we deal with are durable specialties that need to be enjoyed within limits to minimize food miles, and in order to avoid supporting terrible things like child slavery, arms purchasing, and deforestation.

There is a socially appropriate scale of operation that we are identifying as a way of connecting southern Mexico with Southern Ontairo, and this is what we are calling horizontal trade.

This work began in Oaxaca and spread to the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas Mexico. Since ChocoSol Toronto first began in 2005 at the Dufferin Grove and Riverdale farmer’s markets it has and changed. We now work with over 25 different artisans and producer communities in over 6 states: Chiapas, Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, Puebla, El Defe, and Hidalgo.

Just as we are thankful to our Mexican friends and collaborators, WE ARE THANKFUL to the farmers, organizers, and customers in the Farmer's markets who supported, and helped to shape this project. We know from experience that it is in the Farmer's Markets that the most creative producers can encounter the most engaging customers and strike up a relationship that goes beyond just food.

Currently the ChocoSol Learning community is in the final stages of a renovation and upcycling (70% of the materials are re-utilized in creative new ways) of a new production facility we are calling the Cacao Loft. The loft is a convivial kitchen designed to help incubate socially minded enterprises and cooks, and we are located on the 4th floor at #6 St.Joseph Street. (see the St.Joseph's website for information about our artistic and convivial neighbours on the 1st and 2nd floor)

On September 21st, to celebrate the Fall equinox, we will be hosting a Chocolatada at the deck above the Big Carrot. We invite the organizers, farmers, and frequenters of the farmers markets to join us in this ecclectic and artistic celebration. For more information contact us by e-mail or by phone: chcosol01@yahoo.ca, 416 923 6675

To buy our products look for us in the farmer's markets:

Dufferin Grove on Thursday's 3-7pm
Don Valley Brickworks on Saturday's 8am-2pm
Riverdale Farmer's Market on Tuesday's 3-7pm

To see a list of our products check out our website www.chocosoltraders.com For special orders call 416 923-6675

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