6/1/24, 10:47 PM Ch 17.

Managing Water: Irrigation and Drainage - SARE

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Building Soils for Better Crops

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Ch 17. Managing Water: Irrigation
and Drainage
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But the irrigation that nourished Mesopotamian fields carried a hidden risk. Groundwater in semiarid regions
usually contains a lot of salts. … When evaporation rates are high, sustained irrigation can generate enough salt to
National North Central Northeast Southern Western
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Sustainable Agriculture eventually poison the crops.
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—David Montgomery, 2007 News About SARE  
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6/1/24, 10:47 PM Ch 17. Managing Water: Irrigation and Drainage - SARE

Growing seasons around the world rarely have the right amount of precipitation, and deficits and excesses of
water are the most significant overall yield-limiting factors to crop production. It is estimated that more than
half of the global food supply depends on some type of water management. In fact, the first major civilizations
and population centers emerged when farmers started to control water, resulting in more consistent yields and
stable food supplies. Examples include Mesopotamia, literally the “land between the rivers” Tigris and
Euphrates, the lower Nile Valley and northeastern China. High yields in drained and irrigated areas allowed for
the development of trade specialization because crop surpluses no longer required everyone to provide their
own food supply. This led to important innovations like markets, writing and transportation. Moreover, new
water management schemes forced societies to get organized, work together on irrigation and drainage
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schemes, and develop laws on water allocations. But water management failures were also responsible for the
collapse of societies. Notably, the salinization of irrigated lands in Mesopotamia and filling up of ditches with
sediments, often dug and maintained by enslaved peoples, resulted in lost land fertility and an inability to
sustain large centrally governed civilizations.

Shortage of water. It is estimated that drought results in more crop yield losses than by all pathogens
combined. It is also projected that many of the world’s agricultural regions will be drier in the future. Today,
many of the most productive agricultural areas depend on some type of water management. In the United
States, average crop yields of irrigated farms are greater than the corresponding yields of dryland farms by
118% for wheat and 30% for corn. At a global scale, irrigation is used on 18% of the cultivated areas, but those
lands account for 40% of the world’s food production. The great majority of agricultural lands in the western
United States and in other dry climates around the world would not be productive without irrigation water, and
National North Central
the majority of the U.S. horticultural crop acreage, especially
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in California, is entirelyNortheast
dependentSouthern Western
on elaborate 

irrigation infrastructures. Even in humid regions most high-value crops are grown with supplemental irrigation
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during dry spells to ensure crop quality and steady supplies for market outlets.
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6/1/24, 10:47 PM Ch 17. Managing Water: Irrigation and Drainage - SARE

WATER IN FIELDS

Soil conditions may vary significantly within a field, greatly influencing water infiltration and movement.
Runoff with intense rainfall is common at the top of a slope or on a slope shoulder, and water tends to
accumulate in depressions. Both areas may suffer during very dry periods, with the slope top or shoulder
soil having low water storage and with the wet areas in depressions growing plants with shallow root
systems that aren’t deep enough to access water lower in the soil when it is dry. And there may be two or
more soil types within a field with different physical properties that affect water infiltration and movement.
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The extent of these variations may be substantial. It is estimated that these areas of year-to-year unstable
yields—because of either too little or too much soil moisture—represent from about a quarter to a third of
fields in the U.S. Midwest, with possible economic losses of over $500 million per year. Thus, practices such
as no-till and cover cropping, and drainage of depressions, can both increase yields and decrease annual
variations caused by different patterns of precipitation.

Table 17.1
Approximate Amounts of Water Needed for Food Production

Product Gallons of water per pound

Wheat 150 National North Central Northeast Southern Western

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Source: FAO News About SARE  
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6/1/24, 10:47 PM Ch 17. Managing Water: Irrigation and Drainage - SARE

Table 17.1
Approximate Amounts of Water Needed for Food Production

Rice 300

Corn 50

Potatoes 19

Soybeans 275 
Beef 1,800

Pork 700

Poultry 300

Eggs 550

Milk 100

Cheese 600
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Almonds 1,900
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Source: FAO
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6/1/24, 10:47 PM Ch 17. Managing Water: Irrigation and Drainage - SARE

Excess of water. To address excess water problems, the best fields in the United States have had drainage
systems installed, which make those soils even more productive than they were naturally. Drainage of wet fields
overcomes water-logged conditions and allows for a longer growing season because farmers can get onto
those fields earlier in the spring and can harvest later in the fall without causing extreme compaction. Drainage
also reduces yield losses or even prevents complete crop failures when fields experience excessive
precipitation during the early growing season.

The benefits of irrigation and drainage in addressing shortages and excesses of water are thus obvious. They
are critical to food security as well as to the agricultural intensification needed to feed a growing global
population while protecting natural areas. Concerns with climate change, which is resulting in greater 
occurrences of deficits and excesses of precipitation, will increase pressure for more irrigation and drainage.
But they also exact a price on the environment. Drainage systems provide hydrological shortcuts and are
responsible for increased chemical losses to streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries. Similarly, irrigation systems
can result in drastic changes in river and estuarine ecosystems, as well as in land degradation through
salinization and sodium buildup, and they have been sources of international conflict.

Irrigation
There are different types of irrigation systems, depending on water source, size of the system and water
application method. Two main water sources exist: surface water and groundwater. On smaller scales, recycled
wastewater and even desalinized seawater are used in densely populated dry areas. Irrigation systems run from
small on-farm arrangements using a local water supply to vast, regional
National schemes
North Central that involve thousands
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Western
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farms and that are controlled by governmental authorities. Conventional water application involves flood (or
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furrow) irrigation, which is done by gravity flow and is still the most common method around News the world.
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