[bluGill]

Except in a few places drinkable water is in such abundance that nobody every spent significant effort trying to get it. Likewise for air, few people have ever spent much effort getting air to breathe - even in the worst polluted areas bottled air was reserved for airplanes, hospitals (and a few people with medical conditions), and scuba divers.

[eru]

And food is now in such abundance (at least in the western world) that we don't spend much effort on it, either. Or at least, if you only care about energy and nutrition, you can get it for really cheap. If you want something tastier, you can pay more. Exactly the same with drinks.

You could argue that water being so cheap is exactly what you'd expect when the surplus value of water production is sky-high: people only spend a fraction of their income on both food and water production, exactly because the surplus is so high.

Thus if water isn't the basis for all our livelihoods, neither is food production these days.