Irrigation and drainage, artificial application of water to land and artificial removal of excess water from land, respectively. Some land requires irrigation or drainage before it is possible to use it for any agricultural production; other land profits from either practice to increase production. Some land, of course, does not need either. Although either practice may be, and both often are, used for non-agricultural purposes to improve the environment, this article is limited to their application to agriculture. Irrigation and drainage improvements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Often both may be required together to assure sustained, high-level production of crops. The first consideration in planning an irrigation project is developing a water supply. Water supplies may be classified as surface or subsurface. Though both surface and subsurface water come from precipitation such as rain or snow, it is far more difficult to determine the origin of subsurface water.