AbstractIn a summary of the book, six representative situations regarding the link between agricultural technology and deforestation in different agricultural systems are presented. These are the history of developed countries, commodity booms, shifting cultivation, permanent (rain-fed) agriculture, irrigated (lowland) agriculture and cattle production (in Latin America). Main conditioning factors (viz., labour and capital intensity of new technology; farmer characteristics; output markets; labour markets and migration; credit markets; farmer income and investment effects; scale; short- and long-term effects; and the policy context) that determine how technological change affects forests at a more general level are discussed. Labour-market effects and migration are critical in a majority of the cases. New technologies can help relax farmers' capital constraits, which may lead to higher or lower deforestation, depending on how they invest their additional funds.