Agriculture provides food and biomass, but where it expands into tropical forests, it causes drastic biodiversity loss and carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. The Gran Chaco in South America is the world’s largest tropical dry forest, yet it disappears rapidly as it is converted to pastures for cattle ranching and soybean fields. New research now shows that there are still opportunities to turn this trend around and to balance agricultural production with environmental protection. However, this window of opportunity to achieve a more sustainable future is closing very rapidly – it is now or never for the Gran Chaco.