A key issue in understanding who feeds the world is the distinction between calories produced and calories delivered. Simply because a farming method produces a lot of calories, does not mean that those calories are going towards feeding people. Calories can be wasted or channeled into animal feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses, complicating how we assess methods for alleviating hunger. Emily Cassidy and her team studied this phenomenon across major agricultural countries. They found that in India, for example, 89% of produced crop calories went to feeding people during the study period. In Brazil, however, that number was 45%. In the United States, which produces the most gross calories out of any country studied, it was only 27%.