Humans are depleting vital groundwater resources across the globe, creating a significant threat to the international trade of food. Photo by Jenny E. Ross/via Getty Images

We already know that humans are depleting vital groundwater resources across the globe. But a new study shows one of the biggest causes of disappearing groundwater is the international food trade.

About 70 percent of freshwater around the globe goes toward irrigation. Researchers from the University College London and NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies now say that a third of that freshwater is drawn from the world’s aquifers — nonrenewable underground pockets of groundwater — and 11 percent of that nonrenewable groundwater is used to irrigate internationally-traded crops.

That means in time, “the current type of food that’s grown will not be able to be produced,” said Carole Dalin, an environmental engineer at the…