A quick google seems to give various sources that say:
* Farming uses about 80% of all water in california.
* Almonds use 17% of that (so 13% of all water use).
Are almonds important enough to use 13% of all water use in an area suffering increasing cripling drought? I'm happy to have a discussion about it, but calling it a small portion seems to greatly underplay almonds.
Ye gads, that's an amazing stat. I heard heard almonds were using a lot water, but never the scale. For a strictly luxury crop, that is an unbelievable amount of resources in a state with 11 desalination plants.
Almonds are luxury?
Even if we take your googled numbers as fact, it's a relatively small minority of the total farming production in the region.
What isn’t careful, in my opinion, is to take some poorly thought out “water rights” rules and keep applying them, while it is clear they are not fit for purpose and various water levels, both above and below ground, continue to reach new lows every year.