Planting rice in Califoria

This is an interesting topic.
It deals with the drought in California at the moment and the pressure on irrigation supplies.
https://modernfarmer.com/2022/03/california-growing-rice-water-drought/
Apparently some water rights can not be reduced, they are very old ones.

Is it right to massively grow a crop that requires an amount of water that is not within what the climate can support? Wouldn't it be more logical to produce staple food that is adapted to the climate?
True, we can't make sushi with just wheat or corn, and it might be expensive to import all the rice japanese restaurants demand, but there's a reason for rice to be locally expensive: it is adapted to monsoon climates, not mediterranean ones.

Actually, California exports a huge amount of rice. I'm not saying it should but it does. It's not all for domestic use.

The problem goes way beyond rice because California is sinking due to water removal and the Colorado river now dries up before it reaches the Gulf.

Yet they continue drilling deeper for water and continue diverting the Colorado. The small farmer cannot afford a deeper well, so he ultimately loses...

Abraham, did you read the article?
It turns out the soils in the rice growing areas are not much good for growing anything else, thats why the rice is grown.
In Australia we have the same arguments about growing rice, and we also export many tonnes of it.

I had not heard of sinking before?
We also get that on a coast where oil drilling takes place and large amounts of ground water are used.
The roads etc are being wrecked, yet the oil is still being taken with no recompense!!

How can the land be only good for rice when the crop relies so heavily on water from rivers and groundwater? The floodplain has good conditions for planting rice but requires irrigation to bring it to maturity, are there any crops better suited to these conditions? Could healthier soil and deeper roots chase the water table deeper? Maybe Fukuoka’s method would be more appropriate where the field is only flooded for 7-10 days rather than a full month and weeds are instead suppressed with straw, clover groundcover, and no-till. Like William said even with canal allocations cut large farms with deep wells will continue to drain groundwater supply, and damming the water flowing from the mountains will continue to dehydrate the central valley.

https://asmith.ucdavis.edu/news/big-drop-california-rice-acres

Preventing the planting of cotton and rice and replacing row crop/fallow rotations with tree nuts and fruits seems like a good thing in permaculture terms. Why export half the grain across the world to countries more appropriate for growing it? And wouldn’t somewhere like South Carolina be more appropriate for growing the country’s domestic supply? It’s interesting this is posted in low-tech, rice cultivation in paddies couldn’t exist like it does now without irrigation technology and earthworks.