I actually have a PhD in economics. You are right that revenue can increase due to a supply shock. What I should have said is that revenue net of costs can ne

I actually have a PhD in economics. You are right that revenue can increase due to a supply shock. What I should have said is that revenue net of costs can never increase due to a supply shock. Because of this, the full statement this could conceivably even increase the total revenue of almonds sold -- leading to increased incentives to bring more acreage into production is still wrong. Consider the limit as demand becomes (locally) infinitely inelastic. Then a shift of input costs of X will cause the price to change by X. Total volume (call it Y) of goods sold stays the same and total revenue increases by YX. Total revenues net of costs remain the same since total costs increased by YX. The main point here is that markets don't do weird counterintuitive things, at least in a partial equilibrium analysis. Shocks to the costs of inputs always result in less production and less profit. [Reply to edit] No offense taken, I shouldn't have said "econ 101" in the first place since it could be interpreted as disparaging. What I meant is that once we accept the assumptions of partial equilibrium analysis, it really constrains what can happen, and it can be shown by simple well known theory. And you were right, I wrote "revenue" when I should have written "profit". I'm sure that what you are saying about water rights is true, but I'm simply arguing that the increased "cost" of water must move the supply curve of nuts up (at every point) not down. This shift of the supply curve might cause some people to stop growing and others to start, there is nothing in the theory that contradicts that. But everything in this thread still fits into partial equilibrium analysis.