Uruguay

Area actually irrigated in year 2000 was 217 593 ha [UY01]. The crops with the largest extent in irrigation were rice (174 728 ha), vegetables (10 844 ha), pasture (8 170 ha), and citrus fruits (6 521 ha). The figures originate from the agricultural census undertaken in year 2000, but AEI was not reported by the census data base. The number of farms with irrigation equipment was 5 608, but 595 farms that reported irrigation infrastructure, did not irrigate in year 2000. Based on this ratio, we estimated AEI at 243 419 ha. To estimate AEI per province, irrigated areas for rice, citrus, wine, other fruits and horticulture reported by the census data base were summed up. The total irrigated area of these crops was 197 492 ha. Area equipped for irrigation was scaled thereafter so that the sum of area equipped for irrigation at the national scale was equal to the figures estimated before (243 419 ha). The irrigated area estimated that way is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Uruguay irrigation areas in PDF or Uruguay irrigation areas in Excel.

Since maps showing the location of irrigation areas were not available, irrigated area was assigned to all regions classified as agriculture (intensive) in the GLC2000 land cover classification for South America [UY02].

In year 2000, 2 645 farms (47.1 percent) used groundwater sources for irrigation [UY01]. Unfortunately the area irrigated with groundwater was not reported in the agricultural census statistics. The most important irrigated crop was rice with an irrigated area of 174 728 ha or about 80 percent of the total AAI. However, in year 1998 only 4 percent of the rice area was irrigated with groundwater while about 50 percent of the horticultural area was irrigated with groundwater [UY03]. The number of horticulture farms using irrigation was 3 793 in year 2000 while the irrigated horticulture area was 10 846 ha [UY01] which could explain the large total number of farms irrigating with groundwater but relative small areas involved. Based on these statistics we estimated that 6 989 ha rice, 5 423 ha horticulture and 4 800 ha other crops were irrigated with groundwater.

References

[UY01]: Ministerio de Ganadería, Agricultura y Pesca. 2001. Censo Agropecuario 2000. Resultados definitivos, Vol. II. Montevideo, Uruguay, http://www.mgap.gub.uy/portal/ hgxpp001.aspx?7,5,82,O,S,0, 10/03/2012.
[UY02]: Eva, H.D., de Miranda, E.E., Di Bella, C.M., Gond, V., Huber, O., Sgrenzaroli, M., Jones, S., Coutinho, A., Dorado, A., Guimarães, M., Elvidge, C., Achard, F., Belward, A.S., Bartholomé, S., Baraldi, A., De Grandi, G., Vogt, P., Fritz, S. & Hartley, A. 2003. The land cover map for South America in the year 2000. GLC2000 database, European Commision Joint Research Centre, http://www-gem.jrc.it/glc2000, 10/08/2006.
[UY03]: FAO. 2000. AQUASTAT country profile of Uruguay, version 2000. FAO, Rome, Italy.