Forest transitions begin during a period of deforestation. Initially, forests decline in extent as growing numbers of cultivators, with help from loggers, clear forested lands and convert them into fields in order to meet growing demands for food and fiber from human populations that reside, increasingly, in cities. Eventually, agricultural expansion ends. Arguments about forest recovery after agricultural expansion take two general forms. In one line of argument, farm workers leave the land for better paying non-farm jobs. The loss of laborers raises the wages of the remaining workers and makes more agricultural enterprises unprofitable.
Under these circumstances farmers abandon their more remote, less productive fields and pastures.1 These lands then revert to forest.