[PaulDavisThe1st]

Agriculture in the SW uses 75% of all water that flows through and/or falls upon the landscape.

Residential use is 7%, about the same as evaporation and retail/commercial/power-production.

The people living in the desert are not the problem when it comes to water.

[brk]

It's really intertwined. While California exports a LOT, people need to eat and the economies of scale lean towards eating locally grown crops. Living in a desert creates some degree of demand for local crops.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What the other reply said, plus ...

1. crops in the desert are generally OK if they are directly for human consumption. The problem is growing alfalfa and other crops intended to feed livestock - they are incredibly thirsty crops, and the end result is not a lot of food in terms of nutrients or calories. Plus the little detail that a huge amount of the meat produced in the SW is exported to Asia, and so it might "look local" but actually isn't

2. even human-consumption crops are a lesser problem if the farms use the old techniques collectively known as "flood irrigation". Farming in the SW needs to switch to drip irrigation, which requires a significant capital investment by farmers, and I don't think they should be required to bear the whole (and perhaps not even the majority) of that cost.

[estearum]

> economies of scale lean towards eating locally grown crops

No this goes the other way. Massive economies of scale easily outweigh the economies of local agriculture.