In my understanding, it's all true that: - Alfalfa is an especially water-thirsty crop - The vast majority of Utah's water goes to agriculture - The Great Sa

In my understanding, it's all true that: - Alfalfa is an especially water-thirsty crop - The vast majority of Utah's water goes to agriculture - The Great Salt Lake is rapidly diminishing, endangering over 2.7 million people - The Cox family owns an alfalfa farm in Fairview - Cox told Utahns to "pray for rain": https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/06/03/gov-spencer-cox-seeks/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/06/03/gov-spencer-... - Cox has come out against water cuts to agriculture: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-ignorant/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-ignorant... To me this makes it clear that the governor probably has a conflict of interest to some degree when it comes to water conservation and it's good that it's being called out. However: - He has described his farm as "small" in the past. Is he just lying/being misleading? I can't really find anything written about this. How much of a financial incentive does he have personally tied into keeping this farm running? - My guess is it's probably not worth giving him the benefit of the doubt here, but I can't find whether or not his farm is held in any kind of trust or whether he is the sole or partial owner of it. - Utah has several watersheds that don't feed into the GSL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Great_Basin_watersheds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Great_Basin_watersheds as well as a significant portion that drains into the Colorado River. Is water usage for the GSL watershed more or less geared towards agriculture? - Fairview is in the Sevier Lake endorheic watershed, which makes it seem like at least his farm is not directly related to the GSL crisis (which often seems to be an implication). - Agriculture using far more water than urban use is not uncommon at all, in and outside of the Western US - How much desert agriculture is ultimately acceptable in order to save the GSL and effectively conserve for the ongoing megadrought? How close are we really to that number? How many small towns would be made infeasible without the income from farming? Zero? 100,000 people? This narrative about Cox as a kind of alfalfa magnate who stands in the way of water rights seems to be coagulating quite a bit, but I honestly don't know whether it's a useful heuristic to understanding the dynamics at play or a misleading oversimplification. Even outside of what could very well be a huge gubernatorial scandal happening in slow motion, the entire subject of water usage in Utah seems totally underdiscussed. Local news outlets seem to mostly stay above surface level and entirely cleave either to this mostly urban and left-of-center narrative or the farmer's perspective.