[ericbarrett]

34" of consumptive water use (per your source) across the thousands of acres planted is simply unsustainable—plenty of crops use half that, even with 19th century techniques that agribusiness insists on. Also that's more than half of the draw (again per your source) so "most" is quite the exaggeration. And the majority of the loss here is simply surface evaporation!

[swatcoder]

Sure. I wasn’t meaning to defend it and tried to leave room for that. I don’t have the expertise to speak either way.

I just thought it would be constructive to surface some of the detail behind what you reported in your original comment. People’s imaginations can run wild when you talk about California!