Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Interestingly, farmers view water usage as a trade secret I wonder why. Do slight changes in irrigation patterns have a significant effect on crops?
Definitely! If someone is able to figure out how to use less water to grow the same amount of crops they could totally outcompete and undercut other producers. There's an interesting Planet Money episode about it: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/732147345/the-water-marketpla...
We've already had that for years. Farmers don't want to make the structural investments required to get there. Water for farming needs to become prohibitively expensive for them to even consider moving away from their wasteful large fields. Tax the hell out of the land, too.
What takes an acre of land and 100,000 gallons of water (a crop of wheat grass) can be done in a building 1/8 of an acre, 90% lower water requirements if not more, and produce 6x more than what the open plot of land does, on a yearly basis, on average.
I did and proved that almost a decade ago. Looks like nobody still wants to listen.