>Almonds are pretty cherry picked here as notorious for their high water use.
If water use was such a dire issue that we needed to start cutting down on high uses of it, then we should absolutely cherry pick the high usages of it and start there. (Or we should just apply a pigouvian tax across all water use, which will naturally affect the biggest consumers of it.)
Yes, that's roughly what I said in my post. If we're doing a controlled economy and triaging for the health of the ecosystem, we'd start with feed for cattle, and almonds wouldn't be much further down on the list.
The contention with AI water use is that something like this is currently happening as local water supplies are being diverted for data-centers.
If water use was such a dire issue that we needed to start cutting down on high uses of it, then we should absolutely cherry pick the high usages of it and start there. (Or we should just apply a pigouvian tax across all water use, which will naturally affect the biggest consumers of it.)