A landmark study puts coffee's environmental footprint in perspective. Photo credit: Samira Thapa
For years, coffee has shared a seat at the table with the world's most notorious deforestation culprits, lumped in alongside beef, palm oil, and soybeans in global environmental discourse. But a sweeping new study published in Nature Food in February 2026 offers the coffee industry a data-backed reason to breathe a little easier, while sharpening the conversation about where the real forest loss is happening.
The research, conducted by Chandrakant Singh and U. Martin Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, introduces the most comprehensive global framework ever developed to track commodity-driven deforestation.
How the Study Was Conducted: Meet DeDuCE
The researchers developed a model called DeDuCE (Deforestation Driver and Carbon Emissions), merging two previously siloed data sources: high-resolution satellite-based remote sensing and national agricultural statistics. Built on the computational muscle of Google Earth Engine, DeDuCE processes terabytes of spatiotemporal data to link tree cover loss, pixel by pixel, to the specific agricultural commodity most likely responsible.
The model covers 179 countries and 184 commodities annually from 2001 to 2022, generating 9,332 unique country-commodity deforestation and carbon footprint estimations. Each data point comes with an Integrated Quality Index (IQI) — a transparency mechanism that signals how confident researchers are in each specific estimate based on the underlying data quality.
What the Numbers Actually Show
Of the 471 million hectares of global tree cover lost between 2001 and 2022, the study found that only 26% (approximately 5.5 million hectares per year) is driven by the expansion of croplands, pastures, and forest plantations for commodity production. This is a substantially lower figure than many earlier estimates suggested.
The true heavy hitter? Cattle. Pasture expansion for beef production accounts for roughly 42% of total commodity-driven deforestation. Oil palm and soybeans come in second, accounting for around 16% of deforestation. Forest plantations account for another 14%. And then there is coffee, which accounts for around 1% of global commodity-driven deforestation. It is still a contributor, but a rather small one.
The Overlooked Culprits: Rice, Maize, and Cassava
The study's most striking revelation is not about coffee at all. It is about the crops rarely discussed. Staple crops, including maize, rice, and cassava, account for approximately 11% of total deforestation, exceeding the combined contribution of cocoa, coffee, and rubber. Yet these commodities remain almost absent from deforestation monitoring frameworks and regulatory initiatives.
Most deforestation regulations, such as the EUDR, target cattle, palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, rubber, and wood, but do not cover staple crops. Singh and Persson argue that this is a significant blind spot, particularly as global demand for staple foods is expected to grow alongside population increases.
What This Means for the Coffee Industry
The coffee sector has faced genuine and warranted scrutiny over deforestation in recent years, and the study does not suggest the industry has no work to do. Coffee cultivation remains geographically linked to some of the world's most biodiverse and forest-rich regions. But the data provide important context: at a global scale, coffee is responsible for an extraordinarily small share of agricultural forest loss.
This matters enormously for how the industry communicates its sustainability efforts. Rather than accepting a narrative in which coffee is a primary driver of deforestation, the sector can now point to peer-reviewed, satellite-validated research that accurately positions it as a minor contributor within a much larger and more complex global picture.
The DeDuCE dataset is publicly available at deforestationfootprint.earth, allowing companies, regulators, and researchers to access country- and commodity-specific estimates. For roasters, traders, and producers seeking to build honest, evidence-based sustainability claims, this tool represents a significant resource.