Eating ourselves dry

Abstract

Groundwater levels are being depleted at alarming rates in the world's arid and semi-arid regions, mostly because of farm irrigation that has been implemented over the past 50 years with little planning or control by governmental agencies1. On page 700, Dalin and colleagues5 report the first quantification of global, non-renewable groundwater depletion associated with irrigation that is embedded in the world's food trade.