Irrigation and Drainage

Worldwide, irrigated agriculture accounts for about 70-75 percent of global water withdrawals. The share of irrigated land ranges widely, from 4 percent of the total area cropped in Africa to 42 percent in South Asia. The leading countries are India and China with about 58 million and 55 million irrigated land, respectively (amounting to 29 percent and 52 percent of all cropland). Without irrigation and drainage, much of the increases in agricultural output that has fed the world’s growing population and stabilized food production would not have been possible.

Irrigation and drainage will continue to be an important source of productivity growth, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America that still have large untapped water resources for agriculture. In other regions where the scope for further expanding irrigated agriculture is limited, more efforts are needed to enhance the policy, technical, and governance aspects of agricultural water use.

More attention also needs to be paid to alleviating drainage problems, including waterlogging and salinity, affecting about 20-30 million hectares of irrigated land.

Further resources on Irrigation and Drainage:

Water user associations as an essential component of irrigation reform : Kyrgyz Republic's first and second on-farm irrigation projects  Innovative Water Resource Conservation Measures: The North China Plain Water Conservation Project

Increasing Agricultural Productivity through Improved Drainage: Egypt’s National Drainage Projects I and II

Drainage Integrated Analytical Framework (DRAINFRAME)