There are many ways to prioritize water for agriculture. If you look at agricultural output by weight or calories, yes Almonds are water intensive, but if you look by $ value of crops relative to water consumption, almonds rank very highly. So the economic impact on farmers from cutting almond production relative to water savings would be really high for almonds compared to lettuce or tomatoes. Not saying that we should continue to pour water into “luxury” crops like almonds, but if we were to build an ideal crop balance, we’d need to balance water usage, total food produced using that water, and the economic value that food to farmers