I’m always dumbfounded when almonds are pointed to as poor water usage. It’s an order of magnitude less egregious than meat and dairy on a per serving basis.
It matters where that water comes from. A lot of meat and dairy come from places where water is in abundance and comes mostly or entirely from rain. I grew up on a farm where irrigation was something you saw on TV and would have to drive hundreds of miles to see any at all. We had pipes in the ground to drain water into the river. Most of our crop made its way to animal feed and involved not a drop of water that wasnt rain.
A cow grown in Wyoming or Michigan, where they have more water than they know what to do with is less of a problem than water intensive plants grown in California, where people paint their lawns because it's illegal to water them.
California dairy is totally a thing though. We had this TV ad campaign decades ago that always ended with "great milk comes from happy cows; happy cows come from California". Also, Harris Ranch is a pretty decently sized cattle farm down near Coalinga (you know that you're getting close to it when you smell the cow poop while driving down I-5).
The missing information from these almonds vs cows debate is how big the two respective industries are in California. (I don't actually know this answer, so I'm curious if anyone knows.)
