USDA NASS reported that US farms applied 81 million acre-feet of irrigation water on 53.1 million acres in 2023. USDA ERS, citing USGS, notes that irrigation accounts for about 47% of US freshwater withdrawals. Irrigated land is a minority of harvested acres and a majority of crop sales.
Most specialty and small operations still decide when to water the way a neighbor did: a day of the week, a set number of hours, a pump that runs until someone remembers to shut it off. Soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and crop stage are the cheaper clock. They are also how you stop putting water on a zone that already has enough.
A custom stack for this is sensors where the field actually varies, a model that respects your soil and crop, and a valve or a text an irrigator can act on. We baseline applied water on your acres, then track it against that season.
Source: USDA NASS, 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey; USDA ERS irrigation water use.