Irrigation on U.S. farms declined between 2018 and 2023, with fewer farms utilizing irrigation strategies and fewer water utilized total, the newest knowledge reveals.
Over that five-year interval, the variety of irrigated farms dropped by 8%, irrigated acres decreased by 5%, and water use fell from 83.4 million to 81 million acre-feet, in line with the 2023 Irrigation and Water Administration Survey.
About 213,000 farms irrigated 53.1 million acres in 2023, in line with that 12 months’s Irrigation and Water Administration Survey. That’s down from 55.9 million acres in 2018.
These findings point out a decline within the variety of farms participating in irrigation, the whole land space irrigated, and the quantity of water used for irrigation between 2018 and 2023.
The survey, performed each 5 years by the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s Nationwide Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), builds upon knowledge from the 2022 Census of Agriculture, offering detailed and up-to-date insights into water utilization, administration practices, and investments in irrigation programs throughout the agricultural sector.
In response to the findings, most irrigated farmland in the USA is devoted to cropland, together with grain and oilseed crops, greens, nurseries, greenhouses, and hay crops.
Simply 5 states — Arkansas, California, Idaho, Nebraska, and Texas — accounted for practically half of all irrigated acres and greater than half of the whole water utilized.
Extended droughts are straining the regional water programs’ potential to fulfill competing irrigation calls for, and the irrigation sector has more and more relied on groundwater as a result of shortfalls in floor water provide, in line with Developments in U.S. Irrigated Agriculture: Growing Resilience Beneath Water Provide Shortage, a 2021 report by the USDA Financial Analysis Service.
In additional humid areas with variable rainfall, irrigation dietary supplements soil moisture and supplies a significant buffer towards periodic droughts through the crop-growing season, the report acknowledged.
The pressure and shift to groundwater utilization raises sustainability issues, as groundwater ranges in lots of vital aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture are declining throughout the USA.
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