Eating nature: Revealing the ecological cost of food trade through a global biodiversity-risk footprint

International trade in food commodities is a major driver of global biodiversity loss through the conversion of forests to agriculture. Yet existing deforestation metrics often fail to capture the full ecological consequences. We introduce a Biodiversity Risk indicator that weights deforested hectares by species vulnerability and endemism, offering a more nuanced assessment of biodiversity impacts from agricultural expansion into forests. Linking spatially explicit deforestation data with food trade flows, we uncover strong mismatches between countries’ Deforestation Footprint and Biodiversity Risk. Indonesia, despite lower deforestation volumes than Brazil, emerges as the most impacted country due to high species vulnerability and specific crop conversion patterns. Commodity-level analysis distinguishes locally consumed crops (e.g., meat, cassava, rice) from globally traded biodiversity-intensive commodities (e.g., palm oil, soy, natural rubber), offering new insights for targeted interventions. Our findings underscore the need to integrate biodiversity metrics into supply-chain governance and deforestation policies to promote more ecologically responsible trade.