Abstract: The problems and challenges for agricultural water management are markedly different from 50 years ago. To meet the increasing global demand for food, new challenges have been coming: increasing farmers’ income, boosting rural economy, reducing poverty, adapting climate change and protecting the ecological environment, under the conditions of the scare water resources. Therefore, the improvement of strategies and countermeasures relevant to the development of agricultural water management is nessary starting from the thinking of interdisciplinary and various sectors. The strategies include that developing water-saving agriculture, maintaining the service functions of the ecological system, increasing investment in irrigation, promoting rain-fed agriculture, improving and increasing water productivity, reducing poor population, preventing and alleviating the degradation of land and water environmental quality, reducing the risk in waste water irrigation, and strengthening policy and institution building. The efforts in improving agricultural water management and increasing agricultural productivity depend on the rational selection of the above strategies and the benefit tradeoffs.