Share of agricultural land which is irrigated

Agricultural irrigated land refers to agricultural areas purposely provided with water, including land irrigated by controlled flooding.

Limitations and exceptions: The data are collected by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) from official national sources through annual questionnaires and are supplemented with information from official secondary data sources. The secondary sources cover official country data from websites of national ministries, national publications and related country data reported by various international organizations.. The FAO tries to impose standard definitions and reporting methods, but complete consistency across countries and over time is not possible. Thus, data on agricultural land in different climates may not be comparable. For example, permanent pastures are quite different in nature and intensity in African countries and dry Middle Eastern countries.

Statistical concept and methodology: Irrigated agricultural area refers to area equipped to provide water (via artificial means of irrigation such as by diverting streams, flooding, or spraying) to the crops. In non-irrigated agricultural areas, production of crops is dependent on rain-fed irrigation.

Agricultural land constitutes only a part of any country's total area, which can include areas not suitable for agriculture, such as forests, mountains, and inland water bodies. Agricultural land can also be classified as irrigated and non-irrigated land. In arid and semi-arid countries agriculture is often confined to irrigated land, with very little farming possible in non-irrigated areas.