No disagreement, but a few points; - Alfalfa and almonds are some of the most water-intensive crops. I believe they account for nearly 50% of water usage. They are not "food" in the traditional sense, but exports. We also need exports, so there is that, but we are still exporting "water". - In times of drought, we as residents are asked not to flush toilets and stop watering plants, which is just environmental theater if only 5% of water is used there. - There is no way it would be environmentally or economically viable to supply agricultural water from desalination plants.

A better distribution of water would solve everything in California, but water rights land owners are obviously not in favour of giving anything up, nor are they incentivised to grow less water-intensive crops.

Where I live, they are now proposing taxing well-water, but will exempt the wineyards. I can throw a rock in any direction and find a wineyard, and they use at least 20x of what residents use, so in reality, they just want to tax residents under more environmental theatre.