Letter: Organic agriculture will still promote deforestation

From Eric Kvaalen, Les Essarts-le-Roi, France

Christel Cederberg and Hayo van der Werf say that the relationship between the lower yields of organic agriculture and additional demand for land is unclear (21 March, p 25).

They point out that in Brazil, agricultural intensification coincided with increased deforestation, and say that this supports their argument.

But it is clear that if agricultural output had been increased by the same amount using organic farming, then an even larger amount of forest would have needed to be destroyed.