Deforestation for food production

Abstract

Deforestation contributes to carbon emissions and therefore to climate change. Within food systems, agricultural production is the stage which plays the largest role in deforestation and forest degradation, and it is therefore the focus of this chapter. There is a critical link between food systems and deforestation. Arable lands most often have a forested past. It might be ancestral, with deforestation having happened in the early occupation of land by humans or be very recent on current forest frontiers. Over the past two decades, commercial agriculture has overtaken subsistence agriculture as the main driver of deforestation in LI and LMI countries, especially in tropical areas.