Chandrakant Singh, U. Martin Persson

Rapid agriculture-driven deforestation raises significant concerns about achieving climate and biodiversity targets. Linking deforestation to food production is crucial for guiding the development, implementation, and evaluation of forest conservation and climate change mitigation efforts. However, the limited scope and comprehensiveness of available datasets restrict the effectiveness of these efforts. Recognising this, we present the Deforestation Driver and Carbon Emission (DeDuCE) model, merging the best available spatial and statistical datasets to enhance the quantification of deforestation due to the production of agriculture and forestry commodities. DeDuCE reports 9,332 unique country-commodity deforestation-carbon footprints across 179 countries and 184 commodities from 2001-2022, surpassing existing databases in scope and detail. The model provides critical data for public and private sector actors assessing deforestation risks, evaluating the sustainability of investments, and reporting food sector carbon emissions. Notably, our deforestation emissions constitute nearly half of previously reported emissions from land-use activities within global food systems. Moreover, global efforts to curb deforestation are inadequately focused on staple crops, which are also significant drivers of deforestation.