Trees falling as fragile forests become cropland is a visual shorthand for the environmental costs exporting countries pay to meet lucrative global demands for food. Yet a new study reveals a counterintuitive truth: Importing food also damages homeland ecology.

he researchers examine the global trade of soybeans -- a demand which has exploded in China as its population becomes more prosperous. To meet the demand for soybeans as animal feed and food products, China's market gobbled up more than 60 percent of the world's exported soybeans, much of that from Brazil- and at a price Chinese farmers can't match.

Brazil's massive conversion of rainforest and Cerrado to cropland has received much attention, and policies have been enacted to mitigate the environmental damage there. The widely held conclusion has been that importing countries gain environmental benefits and displace environmental costs to the source of food.

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