California is a great place to grow what is grown there, but it is not efficient in terms of water use, in part because the incentives are screwed up. The end

California is a great place to grow what is grown there, but it is not efficient in terms of water use, in part because the incentives are screwed up. The end result of the existing water rights systems is that for some farms in very arid regions, water is basically free, so they use a ton of it growing e.g., Almonds and Pomegranates, highly water-intensive crops which should probably be grown in less-arid parts of the state. If water cost effectively reflected water scarcity within the central valley, I suspect things would be quite different. But this is hard to change, because politics (in California but also everywhere) favors incumbents who have a lot to lose, over newcomers who could have a lot to gain, or over a large population that stands to gain a little bit but not enough to vote over it. (See: occupational licensing, Prop. 13, etc.)