Calgary’s Chef Darren MacLean, in partnership with Food Tourism Strategies, presents a year-long CULTURAL CHEF EXCHANGE to help further understanding of our culinary identity.

Calgary’s Chef Darren MacLean, in partnership with Food Tourism Strategies, presents a year-long CULTURAL CHEF EXCHANGE to help further understanding of our culinary identity.

In a bid to address the growing challenges of feeding an ever-expanding global population, the spotlight shines on resilient cereals like millets as a promising solution. The International Year of Millets 2023 (IYM) was inaugurated with a resounding message at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Rodrigo was invited to the global event in Rome, in October 2023, to proudly represent Latin America and the Caribbean.

Rodrigo was featured on Everyday Heroes. Our team and our purpose always welcome the leverage that stories like these can provide.

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The Valdivia culture, one of oldest settled cultures recorded in the Americas, existed 8000-9000 years ago and left a legacy of archeological treasures. The Valdivia were known for developing incredible and distinctive pottery. We have collected two thousand artifacts that provide a rare window into the ways of life, gastronomy, and traditions of the deep past. Our vision is to reveal and elevate these objects through a world-class museum with participatory gastronomic learning experiences.

We plan to host a yearly summit and invite researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars from around the world to share ideas and experience the bioregion firsthand. The summit will include speakers, culinary experiences, excursions, and a world-class art+science exhibition.

Forest gardens offer a highly biodiverse variety of ingredients and materials that can be used in regenerative products, ranging from high-quality coffee to affordable superfoods.

By creating opportunities for the local community and investors, we will add value to the products of the forest and prove that local economic development doesn’t have to degrade the ecosystems.

We are also currently fundraising to expand our 48 hectare private reserve in the Garúa (mist) Forest, and to build a research station as an important extension of our coastal learning campus. This research station is envisioned to be a space for hosting visitors, students, artists and academic researchers and developing residency programs that fuse the arts, ethnobotanical cooking and ecological sciences.

We are currently designing a 12 day eco-culinary experience for people who are interested to visit our beautiful area and learning about the connections between biodiversity, food and planetary wellbeing. The curriculum is based on connecting with our incredibly diverse landscapes, developing a deeper understanding of the living cycles of food, and and transforming of this knowledge into unforgettable eco-culinary advocacy experiences that can help to make change happen in the world.

We have recently partnered with Treeconomy, an organization that specializes in supporting a verifiable and honest carbon market, in order to ensure that as our operations develop they are carbon “positive”, meaning they sequester more carbon than they release. Tropical forests and mangroves in the region are highly efficient in capturing carbon from the atmosphere, so biodiverse food forest agriculture is a particularly effective method for becoming carbon positive.

Together with our educational nonprofit, we have already begun planting seeds of knowledge about regenerative agriculture and conservation in our surrounding communities. With three schools built, and support for families and they children, we are working to create systemic change which will help build a future for this bioregion that is secure and resilient - one with clean food, meaningful employment and a reconnection with pre-hispanic cultural strength & identity.

In 2020, Rodrigo was elected Ambassador of Good Will f or t he U nited Nations Food a nd A griculture Organization. It is an immense honor for Rodrigo to be a part of this effort, so relevant to what we are doing a t Bocavaldivia. The U N General Assembly designated 2021 the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables ( IYFV), t o raise awareness on t he important r ole of fruits and vegetables in human nutrition, food security and health and as well in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Recently nominated as one of the 50 Best Discovery, as well as featured in other mainstream channels such as CNN international, Bocavaldivia is constantly reinventing itself toward an active participant in the bigger project of the food forest, through crafting exclusive, intimate experiences in communion with the surroundings, lead by Chef Rodrigo Pacheco.

A regenerative community that works in symbiosis with Bocavaldivia to preserve and regenerate the territory and livelihoods with truly sustainable homes in harmony with nature. Tanusas villas offers accommodation for our visitors and students, while also embodying a real world example of living lightly and regeneratively on the land.

We are creating a scientific station for research and development at the heart of a 40 hectare primary forest. La Finca (the farm) is our core 40 hectare agroforestry project that provides our family and Bocavaldivia with most of the products including dozens of varieties of local edible plants, fruits and herbs.

In November of 2018, Rodrigo was part of Netflix’s special “The Final Table” with his colleague Charles Michel. The duo performed beyond expectation in a high pressure, extremely competitive environment. Not only did they succeed in advancing through the contest to almost the final, but more importantly, they had a strong, consistent and clear message around the importance of awareness of food for the future.