[slantedview]

Growing water intensive crops like rice in California, which it grows a good deal of, is just stupid. That is an industry which needs to die. I'd argue the same for almonds, which are basically a water intensive cash crop.

[whyenot]

Almonds use 10% of the state's water supply. The irony is that almonds and apricots have been grown in the Santa Clara valley and surrounding areas without irrigration until tech booms led to orchards being pulled out and replaced with office complexes.

[jonnathanson]

That is an interesting and ironic thing to consider. And I think it's probably inevitable that California shifts its crop mix away from things like almonds, even if at one point they had been grown sustainably (and certainly rice, which is patently unsustainable, but easier to draw down from). Olives, for instance, grow very well in California and are a lot less water intensive than almonds and other trees in the stonefruit family. The downside is that trees take a long time to grow to productive maturity, and phasing one species out for another cannot be done overnight. I have no idea if a phase-out of one in favor of the other is already underway, and I would hazard a guess that if it is, it's proceeding glacially. But some sort of phase-out seems essential.