This paper analyses the impact of European farmers’ responsiveness to changes in agri-commodities prices on their trade-off between agricultural expansion and forestland preservation. We investigate this issue by estimating a recursive model using a comprehensive dataset of European agricultural holdings over the period 2008-2017, covering 128 regions (26 countries). Our main finding is that there is indeed evidence of such a trade-off. An increase in commodity prices leads to higher cropland profitability, which in turn causes deforestation in the 128 European regions considered. Replicating the analysis on different subsamples confirms the robustness of these findings.