Aren't they building a water-hungry semiconductor fab in that state?
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/az/nwis/water_use?format=html_tab...
They are consuming 1195.15 + 987 Mgal/day of groundwater + surface water, and are supplying 963.30 Mgal/day to domestic users.
Industrial uses 6.12 Mgal/day, mining uses 68.3, livestock uses 38.8, aquaculture 34.5, and irrigation uses 4528 Mgal / day.
So... huh. The more I look at it, the less the data makes sense or adds up.
Anyway, it does look like they could just take water away from farmers, and let people elsewhere run out of food, California style.
Anyway, Ag shifted production to the Southwest because when you don't pay the actual value of the water, it's great - lots of sun, long growing season, basically free water = cheapest production.
When water costs money....you'll see quite a bit of that production shift back up north.
It's the same way we don't subsidize farmers to grow bananas in Alaska, and then pretend that bananas would disappear if we stopped the subsidies.