That still very much fits the 'it's not gone' definition. Evaporated water will come down again as precipitation. Your example (cotton) is a truly horrendous

That still very much fits the 'it's not gone' definition. Evaporated water will come down again as precipitation. Your example (cotton) is a truly horrendous crop / textile, but that story sounds like a combination of very poor crop choices for the environment and spectacularly poor resource management. Also, if you apply water at or beneath the ground/mulch layer, overnight, then your loss to evaporation is very low. Similarly, even suspended drip irrigation (think grapes or other trellis grown plants) versus mist or sprinkler systems. Lawns, coming back to TFA, are almost exclusively irrigated by sprinklers, and because they're primarily residential (ie. no automated irrigation systems) they're often watered by hand during the day -- so incur a high evaporation loss.