Interview: Carla Martin

To kick off our Soil season I wanted to interview Carla Martin, so as to set the scene about what 'soil' could mean. It is of course about the ingredient of soil, and how that feeds plants and environment, but it is also about ownership and being part of a wider chain that is global - food and drink chains move across many soils!

Carla is Founder and Executive Director of Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, a non-profit organisation which is dedicated to research and education on fine cacoa and chocolate, and a lecturer at Harvard University in the Department of African and African American Studies.

We spoke about marketing, language and how to do ethical research as well as the particulars of the chocolate chain. A lot of what we are trying to do at Sourced is similar to the work Carla and FCCI have been doing, so on a personal level this was a really interesting chat and a lot of learning for me.

Chocolate, a little like coffee, sits in a space of both everyday and a luxury - it is therefore important to try and understand at a deeper level, including the difficult histories.