On this week's episode of Straight From the Source, host Clay Gordon is joined by Gino Dalla Gasperina, founder of Meridian Cacao, a brand new boutique cocoa brokerage firm created specifically to cater to the needs of startup hobbyist and smaller craft chocolate makers looking to source high-quality beans, but don't have the resources to buy tons at a time. Find out what motivated Gino to start the business and hear some of the challenges of direct sourcing cacao. Learn more about cacao production in Trinidad and Tobago and the differences between direct model and fairtrade and other certification models.This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

"There's so many different ways to alleviate yourself from poverty in Trinidad, but there is not too much incentive to be in the agriculture industry."

"Tobago 80 years ago was a thriving cacao producer and since then has become absent."

"The price of fine flavor cacao is so ambiguous. It cannot be pegged to a trader's commodity."

--Gino Dalla Gasperina, founder of Meridian Cacao on Straight From the Source

As the son of displaced farmers, Michel Nischan, CEO, Founder and President of Wholesome Wave, grew up with a great appreciation for local agriculture and those who work the land. He translated these childhood values into a career as a James Beard Award-winning chef, author and restaurateur, becoming a catalyst for change in the sustainable food movement. This week on "the business of The Business", Phil Colicchio sits down with Michel and picks his brain for a lively, insightful, and entertaining conversation. Learn about the history of the "farm to table" movement and how far we've come as a nation when it comes to the way we feed our population. This program was sponsored by The International Culinary Center.

"I was doing the whole farm to table thing in the 1980's in Milwaukee, WI. At that time, if you told somebody that you and your sous chef drove out to get roadside asparagus with a pig in the back of your van, [customers] wouldn't want to eat it. If you were doing farm to table, you were just weird!" [08:00]

"There are 50 million people that are so food insecure that they don't have money for food that allows them to live a healthy lifestyle. 1 in 4 children are living in poverty in this country." [21:00]

"Subsidies that go to processed food and big ag support the type of mechanization that actually eliminates jobs." " [28:00]

--Michel Nischan on "the business of The Business"

Adam Huggins is a collectivist, (im)permaculturalist, herbalist, musician, and analog filmmaker living in the Bay Area, a sweater of the salt of the Great Ocean and a busybody garlic-peeling hand-processing dumpster-diving propagator of plants and emulsions. You can explore his work at http://sunfishmoonlight.wordpress.com. This program has been sponsored by Tabard Inn.

"Why feed the world? The world can feed itself, if given the chance to." [21:40] -- Adam Huggins on Greenhorn Radio