Dear Authors

I am glad to announce you that your manuscript entitled: "Mitigation of agriculture-driven deforestation in the tropics: comparing land-sparing options at the national level" is now ready for publication after some minor revisions, which should incorporate the arguments you have offered to the reviewers' concerns.

Your manuscript offers an integrative approach to land emissions that simultaneously covers the agriculture and forest sectors, guaranteeing a coherence on land area assumptions (e.g. no double counting, more accurate estimates of land availability, etc). This AFOLU approach moves away from the more conventional LULUFC vs agriculture and makes your research both fresh and timing. Moreover, your analyses cover an interesting variety of datasets including -as a novel element- some associated social and risk indicators.

Your research offers a useful logical framework to characterise optimal mitigation pathways for the AFOLU sector, at the national level, under different land use contexts.

Your responses to the reviewers' points have been properly dealt with. On my side, and just for clarification purposes I would suggest you to explicitly include the definitions of 1. mitigation potentials (since there is an IPCC definition of these terms, under a climate change context, that does not necessarily match yours https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_appendix.pdf) (e.g. your mitigation potentials include no cost and no technical assessments), and 2. yield gap.

Kind regards

Dear Authors

After reading your answers to the reviewers' concerns, I am glad to accept the manuscript in its current final version.

Thank you for your contribution.