Water availability is a crucial factor in agricultural zoning, as it highlights the regional water supply and demand conditions and clarifies the relationship between land use and water balance, thus enabling scientific irrigation. This approach contributes to the sustainable use of arable land and ensures national food security. The long-standing mismatch between agricultural management and water resource supply has resulted in significant over-exploitation of water resources. In this context, this study uses the Henan Yellow River region as a case study, leveraging land use data from 2000-2020, MODIS satellite data, long-term meteorological data, and other supporting datasets. By employing remote sensing inversion techniques and developing a water supply-demand evaluation model, the study systematically investigates the water supply and demand conditions of arable land, assesses the water balance of different plots, and analyzes the spatial aggregation benefits. A multi-agent spatial optimization model is then used to establish irrigation zoning for the arable land. The results reveal that: (1) Over the past 20 years, land use in the Henan Yellow River region has exhibited distinct temporal patterns. Paddy fields, mostly located along the Yellow River, experienced a significant reduction in area from 2005-2010, with this change being more intense than that of drylands, which primarily saw area reductions between 2015-2020. (2) The notable differences in water surplus and deficit across arable land are mainly due to the spatial-temporal mismatch between surface evapotranspiration and effective precipitation. For instance, in areas like Sanmenxia and Xinxiang, surface evapotranspiration is high while effective precipitation is low, whereas in Zhengzhou and Luoyang, surface evapotranspiration is low but effective precipitation is relatively abundant. (3) Under natural precipitation conditions, the water surplus-deficit index for the Henan Yellow River region has steadily decreased over the years, with areas of high surplus-deficit gradually diminishing. By 2020, the average index had dropped to 0.08, with the majority of the region experiencing high, medium-high, and medium risk levels, displaying strong spatial heterogeneity throughout the year. (4) Compared to the current state of irrigation in the Henan Yellow River region, there is a clear need for more precise irrigation practices and restructuring of irrigation zones. The study divides the region’s arable land into five irrigation zones, with the priority control, key monitoring, and orderly management zones accounting for 87.87% of the total area. Different irrigation management strategies should be implemented in each zone. The study concludes that the proposed irrigation zoning method effectively balances the water supply-demand characteristics and spatial aggregation benefits, providing valuable decision support for rational irrigation and land management.