Part of it is that almonds are a large, lucrative export market, while beef is not. While estimates vary, the best I could find is that California has 2% or le

Part of it is that almonds are a large, lucrative export market, while beef is not. While estimates vary, the best I could find is that California has 2% or less (600k) of the country's beef-cattle herd (30M-72M)and 12% of the country's human population. California eats the beef that California produces and much more, while the insidious almond robber-barons direct California's water into their international money-printing export machine for their own profit, depriving the rest of California of a large chunk of their lowland biosphere, destroying the land with subsidence and generally being extractive rather than productive, without benefit to the population. Or so the narrative goes. Additionally, other crops can be and sometimes have been fallowed, while almond trees will apparently start to die without water, and take a decade to regrow.