Food is culture, food is part of our culture. When we exchange food, we are really exchange our love.

I love that with food I can think about who is coming to my table and what do I want to bring to them?

Food is so powerful and is truly a way to connect with one another and form community.

Today, we have brought a beautiful meal from farm to fork. This meal really showcases Cargill's global presence and the innovation that we bring to the table. It’s really about the entire experience that you have when you eat, all the way from the appetizer to a dessert and then finishing off with the drink. And this really represents what we as Cargill do and being able to tell our story from the farm to how we deliver ingredients to the plate.

From my childhood, I've been really in contact with tomato with cooking. My family is from Italian descendants, so cooking is really the central part of our family gathering. I lead R&D for LATAM. I'm here at the Innovation Center in Campinas, where we develop all of our brands like Liza, Pomarola, Elefante, and also ingredients for the food industry. We connect with more than 20 other innovation centers across the globe, with Cargill technology to bring innovation wherever we are.

Cargill has deep roots in Brazil. We are here more than 60 years across agriculture, food, and other industries. Here, tomatoes are a cornerstone for our brands, and we are in more than 50% of the houses in Brazil.

Quality starts with the seeds. We carefully select the seeds and test them for quality, yield, productivity, taste, in order to have the best tomatoes to produce our products. We bring all the technical assistance to farmers to allow them to be able to have the best quality, best productivity, and best practices on the field. We don't understand farms as our providers. They are our partners to develop the food of the future. One hundred percent of Cargill tomatoes come from certified farmers. We want to monitor the tomato from the field to the factory to make sure it delivers all its potential in taste, in color, in freshness. Our scientists, they really go into the deep analysis of this tomato to make sure that we assemble a really rich and delicious sauce at the end of the day.

Elefante brand is here for 80 years, but we understood that we need to really renew this image without losing the quality and tradition that elephant brings to our consumers. We transition from the very traditional can to three grams plastic jar that can be reusable. This new packaging brings 6% less environmental impact and 18% less CO2 emissions. So we really innovate with purpose.

Today's dish is spaghetti made with tomato sauce with a tapenade of black olives, so very delicious. It means comfort. It means cozy. It means something that is close to my heart. To work with food really brings me the sensation of having my family tradition, so it's quite of a personal ambition for me.

Food is a way to connect with people. It creates community and really brings people together. I am part of a group of chefs that works with Cargill to innovate. In my role, I'm working on the bench creating a gold standard recipe and then our R&D team comes alongside me and we work together to iterate something that could be a recipe for scale. It is so fun to work for a company that has all these ingredients that we can play with and create new products and foods that truly excite the consumer.

Here at Cargill, we innovate with purpose. Our purpose is to nourish the world in a safe, sustainable, and responsible way. Healthy animals really promote healthy foods. And so at Cargill, we can influence that all the way from the farm to our fork. We work with the farmers to help determine what is the best food for that animal and what is going to help that animal be healthy.

There's great innovation at the farm level too. And one of those ways is through Galleon. What Galleon does is really look at an animal and their microbiome. What's the best feed for that animal and ensuring that they are going to have a healthy life.

As we innovate a new product, we're thinking about the consumer and how they're going to prepare that meal. Flavor is so important. At the end of the day, we want it to be craveable and enjoyable as well, and so it has to taste good. Hawaiian chicken showcases the current consumer needs. Consumers are looking for something global, but they want a little bit of familiarity as well. We've also created a barley salad that has our Cargill barley along with some macadamia nuts leaning into that Hawaiian flair. So we have that as a side and then also roasted brussel sprouts with a little bit of our Truvia Sweet Complete Brown in balsamic. This meal really highlights the different parts of Cargill and how we come together as one. I think it speaks to that power of agriculture and innovation across all these different parts of the meal.

My first memory of chocolate takes me back to Easter as a child. We would make the paper baskets and fill them with the colorful chocolate eggs. Back then, it wasn't about the quality of the chocolate, it was the shiny, vibrant, wrappers that catch my eye.

In my role, I focus on promoting our premium Belgium confiture chocolate brand, Veliche. I support our marketing, sales and R&D teams. And we welcome customers and chefs to the House of Chocolate for master classes, demonstrations, innovation sessions and trend explorations.

When I create desserts, redefining indulgence means going beyond sweetness and crafting an experience that feels balanced and unforgettable. It's about using premium chocolate in ways that truly showcase it depth and complexity, bringing flavor, texture and visual elegance together in a multi-sensory way.

Indulgence redefined is really about saying consumers want to enjoy food. And so for us, redefining indulgence is making sure that it's healthier for them, it's tastier, more delicious. It's providing that additional benefit of nutrition or cost in some cases where the customer says I'm not willing to compromise.

Those experiences really start with understanding the voice of the customer. And that's really coming from market insights and understanding ultimately what it is that consumers want to eat. We take that and ultimately deliver an application type product that we then take into a sensory experience. And for us, sensory is really about the sensory panels that we have in Cargill. These are trained individuals who give us real life examples of how do these products taste to them. At the end of the day, it's about maintaining the taste, the texture, the flavor delivery that our consumers have become used to for so many years.

For me, even as chocolate innovation becomes more advanced it's important to keep the joy in every bite. People love chocolate because it feels comforting and indulgence. And that emotion should never be lost. Innovation should make chocolate better, not take away what makes it special.

Noir Delight is a dessert I create to truly celebrate Veliche premium dark chocolate, 32%. I love how its deep, intense flavor pairs perfectly with the smoky, slightly spiced notes of the black cardamom, together with the layers of the almond sponge and the thick compote infused with the orange and a touch of armagmac. This dessert becomes the story of elegance and depth. Finished with the caramel sauce, for me, it's all about creating a finale that feels indulgence and unforgettable.

There's a tremendous amount of opportunity that we have in the industry. What this really shows to us is the unlimited potential and the possibilities that we have when we leverage science and creativity. When those two come together, there's so much more that we can unlock.

It's an honor to be part of an industry that respects every step of the chain and really is thoughtfully thinking about delivering the best at the tables of every consumer. To be able to understand how we help the farmers to improve the way they plant things and deliver the best product possible to all households. For me, it's really something that makes me feel really proud.