> The juice is not worth the squeeze.

Water pricing via water trading would help move these considerations of trade-offs to the private sector.

> Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive.

Just as a silly nitpick: you can make food without agriculture. And it's not just via wild fishing, but also by directly producing edible substances from minerals, like producing margarine from coal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter

In general, you are obviously right, though.