New county-level data shows U.S. irrigated farmland grew by more than 3 million acres between 1997 and 2022—but the national number hides a much more interesting story playing out county by county. The Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska has released an updated infographic, Agricultural Water Use Trends in the U.S., 1997–2022, extending its earlier analysis of irrigation trends with five additional years of data. A county-level view shows a patchwork of decreasing and increasing irrigated farmland, shaped less by a single national trend than by local water availability, policy and economics. More recently, local policy has begun to restrict further expansion across much of the state. “Agricultural Water Use Trends in the U.S., 1997–2022.,” Infographic.