Domestic food crops overlooked as driver of deforestation

The research by Trase partners Chandrakant Singh and Martin Persson at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, is published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Food. It confirms that agriculture is the leading driver of deforestation and a major contributor to climate change, responsible for about three-quarters of global forest loss and 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Recognising these impacts, governments have taken measures to curb deforestation, most recently the EU Deforestation Regulation, which aims to reduce Europe’s role in driving deforestation by preventing companies from importing or exporting commodities that have been grown on deforested land.

Yet the new research finds that governments may have underestimated the impacts of staple crops produced for domestic food consumption compared with commodities for export to consumer markets. This is due to the limitations in statistics-based monitoring of agricultural deforestation that offer extensive coverage of commodity production, but lack the spatial precision required to link food systems to deforestation.

To address this challenge, Singh and Persson developed the Deforestation Driver and Carbon Emissions (DeDuCE) model that integrates the best available spatial and statistical datasets to provide a detailed quantification of deforestation associated with the production of agricultural and forestry commodities. DeDuCE delivers 9,332 unique deforestation-carbon footprint estimates for 179 countries and 184 commodities over the period 2001–2022.

Singh and Persson say “the limited scope and comprehensiveness of the datasets previously available for linking deforestation to food production restrict their effectiveness in supporting forest conservation and climate change mitigation efforts. By integrating the best available spatial and statistical datasets, our deforestation attribution framework (DeDuCE) provides a detailed quantification of deforestation associated with the production of agricultural and forestry commodities.”

DeDuCE confirms that the leading driver of agricultural deforestation is pasture expansion linked to beef cattle, which accounts for about 42% of total deforestation and 52% of the carbon emissions. Expansion of plantations to grow oil palm and soybeans follows, together accounting for 16% of total deforestation and 14% of carbon emissions.

The results demonstrate the importance of the EUDR – which applies to all three of these commodities – as a crucial measure to reduce the EU’s contribution to deforestation through its supply chain. The research shows that, as the second-largest trader of deforestation-risk agricultural commodities, the EU accounts for about 14% of all globally traded deforestation-risk agricultural commodities.

However, DeDuCE also shows that staple crops – specifically maize, rice and cassava – cumulatively account for about 11% of total deforestation, exceeding that of EUDR-regulated commodities cocoa, coffee and rubber.

The research suggests that monitoring deforestation linked to domestic staple crops is lacking compared to traded commodities because it is globally distributed rather than concentrated in specific regions of production. But given that nearly half of the global average human diet consists of staple foods and their cultivation is expected to increase to feed growing populations, the research recommends that incorporating staple crops into deforestation monitoring and regulatory frameworks, as well as corporate sustainability programmes, will be vital for curbing global deforestation, promoting sustainable agricultural supply chains and ensuring future food security.

Singh, C., Persson, U.M. Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions. Nat Food 7, 138–151 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01305-4