History of Irrigation Timeline

Global irrigated area reached about 8 million hectares in 1800, marking the beginning of the large-scale expansion that would accelerate dramatically during the twentieth century.

Image source: Irrigation

Global irrigated area reached approximately 94 million hectares in 1950, up from 8 million hectares in 1800 and demonstrating the dramatic scale-up of irrigation.

By 1990, global irrigated area had reached approximately 235 million hectares. Irrigated land supplied about 30% of global food production.

From 2000 to 2023, China and India had the largest net gains in equipped irrigation area, adding approximately 21 million and 15 million hectares respectively.

Between 2000 and 2020, China and India recorded the largest net gains in equipped irrigation area: approximately 21 million hectares in China and 15 million hectares in India.

In 2000, the global land area equipped with irrigation infrastructure totaled about 289 million hectares, equivalent to approximately 2,788,000 square kilometers or 689 million acres.

By 2012, irrigated land had increased to an estimated 3,242,917 square kilometers, or about 801 million acres—an area nearly the size of India.

By 2021, the global land area equipped for irrigation reached 352 million hectares, 22% above the 289 million hectares recorded in 2000 and more than twice the area equipped in the 1960s.

In 2023, the global land area equipped for irrigation reached 355 million hectares, a 23% increase from 289 million hectares in 2000 and more than twice the area equipped in the 1960s.

In 2023, Asia contained 71% of the world’s equipped irrigation area. The Americas accounted for 16% and Europe for 8%. Irrigation was a key component of Asia’s Green Revolution.

In 2025, irrigated croplands produced 48% of all crops by value. Irrigated land was estimated to be 3.2 times more productive than rainfed land in value terms.

Egypt devoted 105,000 hectares to cotton in 1861, and that area increased fivefold by 1865, deepening the country’s dependence on irrigated cotton production.

Congress passed the Desert Land Act in 1877 and the Carey Act in 1894 to encourage irrigation in the American West, although the measures increased irrigation only marginally.

Irrigated land in the United States grew from 300,000 acres in 1880 to 4.1 million acres in 1890 and 7.3 million acres in 1900.

After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the British intensified conversion to perennial irrigation through projects including the Delta Barrage, Assiut Barrage, and the first Aswan Dam.

California’s Wright Act of 1887 permitted agricultural communities to construct and operate the irrigation works needed for farming, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley.

The National Reclamation Act of 1902 directed money from western public-land sales into irrigation projects on public or private land in the arid West, helping establish federal reclamation policy.

Image source: Newlands Reclamation Act

The Union of South Africa established an irrigation department in 1912 and began investing in water-storage infrastructure and irrigation systems.

The Reclamation Extension Act of 1914 transferred significant irrigation decision-making authority from the Reclamation Service to Congress, reflecting growing political dissatisfaction with federal irrigation schemes.

Image source: Bureau of Reclamation

Construction of the Hartbeespoort Dam began in 1916 as one of South Africa’s early significant irrigation projects. It was intended to improve living conditions for poor white communities and was eventually completed as a whites-only employment opportunity.

A decree issued by Lenin in 1918 encouraged irrigation development in Central Asia. Large-scale implementation began in the 1930s, driven in part by the goal of cotton self-sufficiency.

The Tana River Irrigation Scheme in eastern Kenya was completed between 1948 and 1963, opening new land for agriculture as part of twentieth-century irrigation development in Africa.

In the 1952 case Arizona v. California, Arizona sought greater access to the Colorado River, arguing that its groundwater supply could not sustain its largely irrigation-based agricultural economy. Arizona won the case.

Image source: Arizona v. California

Water stored beneath the Sahara began to be delivered to Libya’s coast in 1969, when Muammar al-Gaddafi and American engineer Armand Hammer built the Great Man-Made River project.

By 1975, the Soviet Union used eight times as much water as it had in 1913, with most of the increase devoted to irrigation, especially cotton production in Central Asia.

Mikhail Gorbachev ended a proposed plan in 1986 to reverse the Ob and Yenisei Rivers for irrigation. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended Russian investment in Central Asian cotton irrigation.

In the mid-twentieth century, diesel and electric motors enabled groundwater pumping from major aquifers faster than drainage basins could replenish them, producing widespread overdrafting.

Image source: Overdrafting

Former Australian cricketer Wally Edwards, who founded Holman Industries in 1966, targeted the do-it-yourself market in garden watering systems in the early 1990s. Robert Hugall had earlier become known as the father of backyard irrigation.

As of 2017, most center-pivot systems used drops suspended from U-shaped pipes, placing sprinkler heads only a few feet above crops and limiting evaporative losses.

By November 2019, a Glasgow-based startup had helped a farmer in Scotland establish edible salt-marsh crops irrigated with seawater, illustrating experimentation with saline-water agriculture.

Irrigation guns are similar to rotors but generally operate at very high pressures of 275 to 900 kPa and flows of 3 to 76 liters per second, commonly using nozzle diameters from 10 to 50 millimeters.