Lithium mining is somewhat less vulnerable to the groundwater table collapse; while some water is still needed to maintain the miners, it’s not agriculture-levels of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44162654

>“You can’t eat an iPhone,” talking to me on his own.

You can't eat money either, and yet with money you can buy all the food you want since someone somewhere will want to exchange the money for food.

And as much as people complain about technology companies being spoiled, farmers as a whole generally have to be forced to not do things that are extremely dangerous to the environment. Pumping out all the water they have in an aquifer. Continually irrigating until their soil becomes salt. Spraying poisons on monocultures until everything around them looks the same and 3 horrific hard to kill insect types are left plaguing everything. Avoiding crop rotations and plowing early so all their soil blows/washes away. Growing crops that drink 100x the water of native plants, etc, etc, etc.

Yes, we absolutely need food to survive. Does it have to be almonds and cows? Probably not. Don't let farmers as a whole act like they are some pro-ecological force here to save the world either, as everything to keep them from damaging the planet has been forced on them too.