Cadmium maps to aid Colombian cocoa producers

Cacao is one of Colombia’s most important crops. People in Colombia consume much of the crop, and it also generates more than $13 million in annual exports from the cacao beans, and cocoa, the processed form. Yet Colombia’s cacao beans often contain cadmium levels that surpass international limits, creating barriers for local producers. To address this issue, a group of scientists mapped the distribution of cadmium concentrations in the soil and beans of the country’s main cacao-producing regions, including the areas where the beans showed high or low concentrations of the metal. The scientists published their findings in Science of the Total Environment (2024, DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176398 ). They found an average of 2.17–2.71 mg of cadmium per kilogram of cacao in the farms they studied, which means much of the crop exceeds the European Union’s limit of 0.8 mg of cadmium per kilogram. “Decision-makers in the government can use the