The United States is still growing crops, but not as much as it used to, according to a new report by the Center for Food Safety.
The center’s report found that in 2016, the US had the second-lowest per capita per capita output of crops in the world.
In 2016, according a recent study, there were 4.9 million acres of US agricultural land, which represents only 3.3% of the world’s land surface.
While the US has plenty of farmland to produce food, it’s still growing food on only about 4.3 million acres.
“While the world is producing more food, the United States has lost ground in terms of its per capita production of food per person,” the report states.
The report notes that this has “created significant challenges for farmers in rural America, and particularly in rural communities in areas with little access to fresh water.”
As we continue to grow food on less land, we’re losing ground, said David Mankiw, director of the Center on Global Development at Columbia University.
We’ve got to think about the future, and how do we move ahead with the innovation and the agricultural innovations that we’re already investing in to help make the world a more sustainable place,” he told The Verge.
While we’ve made a lot of progress in the past five years, we’ve got a lot to do, he added.