Heat shocks kill crops, farmers clear forests instead of adapting — and it's getting worse

When extreme heat damages crop yields in tropical regions, farmers respond by clearing more forest and planting more land rather than switching crops or changing how they farm. This pattern is measurable in satellite data from 2001 to 2019, and the researchers project that warming through 2100 could trigger 28 million additional hectares of deforestation — an area larger than New Zealand.

The standard assumption in climate economics is that when productivity falls, people adapt: switch crops, move production, adjust inputs. This paper shows the opposite happens on the agricultural frontier. Farmers facing heat-driven yield losses don't innovate or relocate — they expand acreage into forest. The mechanism is simple: heat reduces yields, local prices rise, and clearing more land becomes the path of least resistance. This matters because it means climate damages don't just reduce agricultural output — they trigger a feedback loop where climate stress drives deforestation, which accelerates warming, which triggers more deforestation. The finding breaks a core assumption development banks and climate models have relied on for decades.