Irrigation and Water Management Survey

The target population for the Irrigation and Water Management Survey was composed of all farms irrigating in the reference year. From the Census of Agriculture, records are identified as belonging to the general U.S. irrigation population on the basis of having irrigation activity on their farm or ranch. The target population was expanded to include any operations that had irrigated land in the past five years. Institutional, research, and experimental farms were excluded from the total number of irrigators that reported in the census.

The sample was drawn at a State level for all 50 States. This sample design targeted a U.S. level sample size of 35,000. A certainty stratum, with farms selected with probability one, was included for each State to ensure that the major irrigators in each State were sampled. The remaining strata were sampled systematically by irrigated acreage. The stratification boundaries varied among the States and were dependent on the distribution of total acres irrigated within the State. The stratified design ensured that the sample was reflective of the survey population and achieved the appropriate coefficients of variation (CV) levels at both the U.S. and State levels.

• Survey (self- or interviewer-administered)

• Every five years

• Last year/last 12 months