I am finding that 42% of California water is agriculture and 8% of that is for almonds. 3% of state water usage on a luxury nut might not be moving the needle that much, but it does feel wasteful for a state that is perpetually hovering on drought conditions.

It's an export product, they produce about 80% of the world almonds.

You grow what fits your climate, almonds grow very well in California.

If you want an egregious example, alfalfa in Arizona, especially when you know it's irrigated by flooding the field

https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-drought-arizona-alfa...

Much of that water comes out of a collapsing acquifer.

It's even more wasteful when you realize that the USG is trying to force governments around the world to buy Californian almonds, even in places where almonds are traditionally grown and harvested.

And then there's the matter of Saudis coaxing farmers to grow alfalfa which is then exported to Saudi Arabia to feed cows there (!).

> even in places where almonds are traditionally grown and harvested.

California grows 80% of the world's almonds. Every other place that grows almonds is practically a rounding error in the number of almonds out there.

Precisely my point. The US grows an unsustainable amount and then pushes it to places it was grown in traditionally like the Mediterranean, Western Asia and the Middle East.

How do you decide what's "unsustainable"? And what does "pushing almonds" look like exactly?

Almonds are fucking delicious and nutritious. They sell themselves.

The USA produces the lion's share thanks to USG subsidies, then the USG comes over to the old world countries and the commerce reps start faulting the countries for a.) blocking American agricultural imports or b.) subsidizing their own local agriculture.

Since the American almonds are also produced at a much larger scale, they can also underprice the locally produced almonds ridiculously, which further disincentivizes local farmers from growing almonds and forces them to grow something else.