I love almonds but we should not be unsustainably subsidizing their production by allowing farmers to massively deplete aquifers with little costs borne on their part because their great great great grandpappy happened to settle early enough to get a disproportionate share of the water rights. If they have to shoulder that cost then they have a reason to grow more water efficient crops rather than spamming almonds.

Farmers effectively mining out the groundwater below them can be really bad in areas that recharge those aquifers very slowly, particularly since that changes the soil to be more compacted such that instead of filtering down and recharging the groundwater the water instead piles up on the surface and runs off as floodwaters to areas unfortunate enough to be downstream.

Ok, but they give sources and get into the numbers, and out of all the articles on the first page of seach results about the comparison that I looked at it seemed like the best source. The point isn't that almonds are worse than data centers, I just don't think the specific claim that almonds use less water than data centers is true and so I am refuting it. I didn't find any sources that tried to support that claim, but I'd read them if you know of any.