> The farm water does not come from the same distribution system as city water.
Yes, it does, ultimately, in very large part. It may not traverse all of the same infrastructure, but it comes from the same sources, which have limited capacity. (And, in California, quite a lot of both urban and agricultural water is delivered by either the California State Water Project or the federal Central Valley Project, and an additional fraction of both urban and agricultural water is from sources downstream from the diversions for those water projects, and thus competes directly with them.)
> However, it is not clear at all that agricultural uses even compete with urban uses.
Yes, its quite clear that they do compete quite directly in California.
> People tend to think about water distribution similarly to electricity, which is completely wrong. With electricity, there is one all-encompassing grid that everyone uses, and if some people use more of it
In California, water is very much like that. Even the sources that seem separate (“I have my own well”) tap into sources (aquifers in the case of wells) shared with, and thus competing with, other uses.
> it is as if there were thousands of independent grids that cannot be easily connected
It’s really not like that all in California, especially outside of certain parts of rural Northern California: the vast majority of both the urban and agricultural parts of the rest of the state are dependent on the two big water projects and/or Colorado River water.
Yes, it does, ultimately, in very large part. It may not traverse all of the same infrastructure, but it comes from the same sources, which have limited capacity. (And, in California, quite a lot of both urban and agricultural water is delivered by either the California State Water Project or the federal Central Valley Project, and an additional fraction of both urban and agricultural water is from sources downstream from the diversions for those water projects, and thus competes directly with them.)
> However, it is not clear at all that agricultural uses even compete with urban uses.
Yes, its quite clear that they do compete quite directly in California.
> People tend to think about water distribution similarly to electricity, which is completely wrong. With electricity, there is one all-encompassing grid that everyone uses, and if some people use more of it
In California, water is very much like that. Even the sources that seem separate (“I have my own well”) tap into sources (aquifers in the case of wells) shared with, and thus competing with, other uses.
> it is as if there were thousands of independent grids that cannot be easily connected
It’s really not like that all in California, especially outside of certain parts of rural Northern California: the vast majority of both the urban and agricultural parts of the rest of the state are dependent on the two big water projects and/or Colorado River water.