Agricultural Wastewater Treatment Market: Market Size & Forecast 2026

Agricultural wastewater treatment encompasses the technologies, systems, and services used to treat effluent generated from livestock operations, crop irrigation runoff, agro-processing facilities, and aquaculture, with the goal of meeting regulatory discharge standards or enabling safe reuse for irrigation. The market sits within the broader reclaimed water sector, which reached approximately $18 billion in 2025 and is expected to expand to between $30 billion and $45 billion by 2030-2034, with agricultural reuse representing a major application segment.

• •Treatment solutions span conventional systems such as lagoon-based and activated sludge processes, as well as advanced technologies including membrane bioreactor (MBR) systems, constructed wetlands, biochar filtration, and nutrient recovery units that convert waste streams into bio-based fertilizers.

The market is propelled primarily by worsening freshwater scarcity, increasingly strict environmental regulations governing nutrient runoff and effluent discharge, and growing economic incentives to recover nutrients from waste streams as bio-based fertilizers.

• •Regulatory frameworks across the European Union, the United States, and other regions are mandating tighter limits on nitrogen, phosphorus, pathogens, and heavy metals in agricultural discharges, pushing farm operators and agribusinesses to invest in treatment infrastructure.
• •Additionally, the economics of water reuse are becoming more favorable as energy and chemical costs for treatment decline and the value of recovered nutrients in circular-economy applications rises.

The market can be segmented by technology type, including physical-chemical systems, biological treatments, membrane-based processes, and natural systems such as constructed wetlands and biochar-based filtration, as well as by application, including livestock operations, crop irrigation, aquaculture, and food processing.

• •Geographically, North America and Europe are the most mature markets, driven by established regulatory frameworks and government investment in water reuse infrastructure, with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre actively evaluating the economic viability of reclaimed wastewater for agricultural irrigation across EU member states.
• •The Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions represent the fastest-growing segments, where intensifying agriculture, water stress, and emerging regulatory standards are driving rapid deployment of treatment solutions.

What are the recent trends and outlook?

The market is moving toward integrated treatment-

Named companies and quantified developments shaping the Agricultural Wastewater Treatment Market market.

• •Veolia Environnement S. A. - Veolia secured a contract for France’s largest treated wastewater reuse project in Argelès-sur-Mer, designed to treat 1.3 million cubic meters annually for agricultural irrigation.
• •Kurita Water Industries Ltd. - Kurita successfully demonstrated electricity generation from wastewater via microbial fuel cells in December 2024.
• •Xylem Inc. - Xylem implemented AI-driven dynamic optimization systems across large-scale treatment plants by 2026.
• •Aquacycl - Aquacycl partnered with a global food and beverage giant to deploy its BioElectrochemical Treatment Technology (BETT) in December 2023.