Abstract:Water resources crisis is a critical issue that had seriously hampered the development of social economy. As a major water consumption user, the development of agriculture will face the challenge of "less water consumption and more food production". Since 1980s, agriculture experienced the rapid development period of water conservation irrigation in China. The implementation of water conservation measures greatly reduced the irrigation water retrieval amount, and improved the irrigation efficiency. The crisis, however, has not been eased, and the ground water table is continually decreasing. We have to re-examine and review the water conservation agriculture schemes. Taking the advantage of remote sensing on dynamically monitoring crop evapotranspiration, crop pattern, and crop yield in temporal-spatial scales, this study aims to explore the existed problems and challenges in the development of water conservation irrigation agriculture from the new perspective of water consumption, and proposes that the water consumption management with stakeholders participation would be an inevitable way for the sustainable development of water resources.