[Zarathustra30]

And yet, Californians still grow rice, a pound of which requires about 300 gallons of water to grow. The 11.8 million gallons the kingpen used is enough to grow about 40 thousand pounds of rice, which is worth about $20,000. That is less than a quarter of the kingpen's water bill of $90,000.

[lmkg]

To be fair, rice farmers have scaled back their crop by (iirc) 25% this year.

[rcthompson]

The implied question is how they're making any money at all if it costs $90k worth of water to grow $20k worth of rice.