Grant Vinning works in cocoa in the Pacific and Indonesia. In the Pacific, he has worked in different parts of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu. Grant’s work is to find new markets and work with local people to develop their skills to exploit these new market opportunities. Grant’s interest in cocoa has resulted in his publishing Cocoa in the Pacific: the first fifty years. The book explores the origins of cocoa in five Pacific countries with the objective of identifying where the initial germplasm originated as a means of helping breeders address current issues such as pests and disease resistance, yield increases, and climate change. He is currently working on the most recent fifty years of cocoa in the Pacific.
Grant also writes a bi-monthly cocoa market newsletter that goes to cocoa growers, chocolate makers, researchers, and policy makers in 10 countries. He is the Judges’ Coordinator at the highly successful Bougainville Chocolate Festival and the adjudicator of the Festival’s Big Bean Competition. Grant relishes eating chocolate both as a professional and a consumer.