CARBON FOOTPRINT OF THE COLOMBIAN COCOA PRODUCTION

Cocoa is an important commercial crop in the tropics; and estimating the carbon emissions in the producing-areas is a worthwhile effort. The main goal of the current paper was to evaluate the carbon footprint (CF) per kilogram of Colombian cocoa bean produced under conventional and agroforestry managements, following the methods proposed by PAS 2050. In this research, we compared our results to other worldwide researches, showing an overview of the current limitations and challenges involving the CF researches. Our results showed that all calculated environmental burdens were lower for the conventional management. In the agroforestry practice, composting of cocoa pod husks contributed with approximately 34.00E+00 g methane and 2.55E+00 g nitrous oxide emissions per kilogram of cocoa grain produced. Therefore, such practice could reduce CF by 6.00E+00 kg CO2 Eq kg(-1), which is certainly a significant amount. These cocoa residues left on the ground have a strong impact on CF of both studied managements due to the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter, which represents more than 85% of emissions. We concluded that both evaluated production processes can emit environmental burdens at the same magnitude. Definitely, there is a widespread need to improve cocoa production system by changing old and less productive plants to the so called clones to ensure cocoa yield and quality worldwide.