North Macedonia

Area under irrigation in North Macedonia is 163 700 ha of which sprinkler systems cover about 100 000 ha and surface irrigation methods 63 700 ha. However, most of the systems are in poor condition. Additionally parts of this area has been lost to urbanization, other parts never received water. It is reported, that 32 percent of the irrigation distribution system is completely out of use, 22 percent faces serious deterioration, 19 percent moderate deterioration and only 27 percent is fully serviceable. In 2004, when the country was still named The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the actual extent of area equipped for irrigation was about 127 800 ha [MK01] as shown in the table below and in the downloadable files The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia irrigation areas in PDF and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia irrigation areas in Excel. No sub-national irrigation statistics have been made available.

41 Irrigation areas located in the country were digitized from an irrigation map [MK02]. The area equipped for irrigation was reported for the 8 largest schemes (in total 104 449 ha). The corresponding area equipped for irrigation was assigned to agricultural land as extracted from the Corine 2000 land cover database for Europe [MK03] located within the digitized polygons. Polygons were extracted from the Corine database if classified as non-irrigated arable land (211), permanently irrigated land (212), rice fields (213), vineyards (221), fruit trees and berry plantations (222), pastures (231), annual crops associated with permanent crops (241), complex cultivation patterns (242) or land principally occupied by agriculture, with significant areas of natural vegetation (243).

The total AEI irrigated with groundwater is estimated at about 5 000 ha [MK01], while total AAI in year 2007 was 79 638 ha [MK04].

References

[MK01]: Vukelic, Z., Jankovic, J.T. & Kondinski, I. 2006. Country report from Macedonia. In: Dirksen, W. and Huppert, W. (ed.). Irrigation sector reform in Central and Eastern European countries. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany, 251-328.
[MK02]: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Supply. 2005. Irrigation systems. http://www.water.org.mk/plavo/currentstructures/Irrigation.htm, 26/04/2005.
[MK03]: EEA. 2005. Corine land cover 2000 - vector by country (CLC2000), version 1. http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=667, 29/08/2005.
[MK04]: State Statistical Office. 2008. Census of agriculture, 2007. State Statistical Office, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, http://www.stat.gov.mk/english/glavna\_eng.asp?br=19, 21/08/2009.