He wants his fair share, but he wants everybody else to prosper, too.. If I follow them south into Resnick almonds, I can see where the water is going. EIN: 41-0953924. She walks off the stage with Stewart. Me, Im a carpetbagger from Beverly Hills. The wall of Pacifico and 16-ounce cans of Bud is rebuilt daily. I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it. For as far as I can see, the water in the canal runs inky through the orchards. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. But others are suspicious of Vidovichs record of buying land and selling its water, both surface and groundwater, out of the area, sometimes to urban users. The problem is this last drought lasted five years. Cotton still grows on the lake bottom, but less and less each year. Nearly $365 million worth of Wonderful almonds will have dropped down from the dry sky. My life is about California. Where gravity needs a boost, the pipes run atop wooden crates used to pack boxes of fruit. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. He explains that Wonderful has grown too big to hassle such precision. I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. When a farmers orchards encompass 186 square miles, finding the field man can be a challenge. The scale of productionand the ability to process, market, and sell its own cropsallows Wonderful to be mostly mediocre in the fields and remain highly profitable. Then the autumn of 2016 arrives with the strangeness of clouds. Now theres something here. The bureau happened to be my house in northwest Fresno. Thanks to Wonderfuls $15 million Get Crackin campaignthe largest media buy in the history of snack nutspistachios now rank among the top ten bestselling salty snack items in the U.S. We are no longer processing nuts, he says. Also set to pitch in is hedge fund executive Donald Sussman who told . Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. We hope you enjoy Finding Lost Hills., The 11-minute film opens with a shot of swirling dust. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. Correction: August 8, 2022 An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Stanford grad James Griffin "J.G." Thats our goal. Some of them have paid $12,000 to buy their trailers and spent thousands more to fix them up. His father was 3 years old at the time. Stewart would deny that Giblers reporting played a part in their philanthropy. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. On the way out, the voice in their head, Lyndas voice, goads them to give one more hour to the Wonderful Fitness Center. A flour tortilla. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. Then the men of cotton, driven out of the South by the boll weevil, put the five rivers into canals and dried up the lake. His 15 million trees in the San Joaquin Valley consume more than 400,000 acre-feet of water a year. Im sure I knew we had a pipeline in there. I thank him and hurry down the dirt road through the almonds, eyeing the rearview mirror to see if a Resnick truck is following me. Locals recount how he bought a 360-acre parcel in Los Altos Hills for $5.5 million and, only four years later, turned around and sold part of it to the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District for $9.3 million. So so sleepy, says another. The buyer? Hes never put a dusty boot on the neck of a shovel and dug down into the soil. Bernards eyes are fixed straight ahead. She seems a little nervous waiting in the wings. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. Domestic sales are up 42 percent over the past eight years, but foreign sales have stalled. Resnicks billions rely on his ability to master water, sun, soil, and even bees. The hillocks that existed back in Yokut Indian days were flattened by a hunk of metal called the Fresno Scraper. Welcome to the club. But she doesnt dictate this or that. Angelica would prefer not to get into the details of their financial arrangement. Four tribes of Yokut lived along its shores. As far as the company can tell, no active salmonella has ever traced back to the plant. He sold a chunk of land to the builders of Sunnyvale and decided he could develop the rest himself. Month after month, she made ends meet on a $1,600 budget. Iranian pistachios show up in Tel Aviv as nuts from Turkey. In the years of plentiful rains and heavy snowmelt, the bank fills up with more than 1 million acre-feet of stored water. Wow. California showed me why.. The fog is our history. Now in farming, were in a unique position. Im driving too fast for the ruts in the road. This sale made headlines because it was engineered by one farmeran outsider from the cityfor his benefit only. The biggest farmer of them all is tearing out 10,000 acres because he doesnt have enough water to cover the nuts to harvest. I steer past Wasco to the dust-blowing orchards that flank Lost Hills, the densest planting of almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates on earth. Thats why he built the pipeline. More than one ballad was about the valley, so he came to Fresno. The shelves spill piatas, gloves, hats, pruning shears, and loaves of Bimbo white bread. Now its the Bobcats turn. Annual sales at the Mint jumped to nearly $1 billion. Inside, a trainer watches over a line of treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bikes. More pumping, locals say, worsens the regions destructive land subsidence. Lynda is making the trip on the company jet more often these days. His second son is a psychiatrist. One of the most dramatic alterations of the earths surface in human history took place here. Damn, if he doesnt look even younger and more fit than the last time I saw him eight years earlier. The Wonderful Company is located in Californias Central Valley where droughts hit frequently, but that hasnt stopped the company from harvesting record crops. He had spent the morning on his exercise bike reading Fortune. In a region of wall-to-wall plantings, one of the walls is crashing down. Eat a corn tortilla instead, she urges. Name. The depletion is causing land to collapse nearly a foot a year, in what U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists Devin Galloway and Francis Riley called one of the single largest alterations of the land surface attributed to humankind.. We had gangs and murders, but thats better, too., He has come to El Toro Loco to cash his check and buy some beer. Theyll take home $11 an hour for their labors. With that insight, he sold the company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. By the time he graduated from UCLA in 1960 and entered its law school, he was bringing home $40,000 a yearthe equivalent of $320,000 today. As you know, our philosophy at Wonderful is doing well by doing good. What kind of empire are you trying to build?, Im here to show the farmer that ags footprint needs to get smaller., I chew on his answer for a second. At the buildings he was cleaning, he noticed that no one was watching the front and back doors. I didnt know good land from bad land. The four grandchildren have visited the orchards once or twice. The truth a mercenary has landed on. She wanted to tell the story of the pomegranate, he told me with a touch of sarcasm. What kind of place is this? Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. I cut across Twisselman Road to the pipeline gliding along the aqueduct like a silver snake. I returned for two more sessions, and then he and Lynda took off to their $15 million vacation house in Aspen, where they were warring with the locals over a housing project for community workers that was blocking their view. The Boswell company, their attorneys and Tulare Lake Canal Company president Mark Unruh did not respond to repeated requests for comment. He was a small, trim man, no more than 5 foot 5, in his early 70s with thinning silver hair and brown eyes rimmed in pink. . In the summer of 2010, hed spent several days documenting the deplorable conditions of the modern company town. This is the closest to hills it comes. This is the domain of Stewart Resnick, the richest farmer in the country and maybe the most peculiar one, too. Where does the water end up? Already mechanization is changing, you know, the labor situation. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. Still, none of it would have happened without luck., What he and Lynda had done with the wretched pomegranate was another matter. Facebook gives people the power to. Today, the highest bidder may grow crops in the region. Thats more than double the crop that Resnick boasted about when I saw him eight years ago. It's John Vidovich. John Vidovich is a real estate developer who specializes in land use and development deals involving everything from mobile home parks and large apartment complexes to wine vineyards, pistachio farms and water baron. In Lost Hills, they call her Lady Lynda. She shows up in high fashion and stands in the dust and tells them about another charter school or affordable-housing project she is bringing to them. And so the question of sustainability is front and center here now in California. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. Instead of trying to sell the fruit as a piece of fruit, they squeezed its seeds into POMWonderful. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. So much snowmelt comes down the mountain that it nearly takes out Oroville Dam. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. Look, I delegate a lot of things, obviously. Angiola has become a critical element of Vidovichs water moves, transferring water across the Valley for additional sales, so much so that it put him and the district in hot water. And how will the Resnicks fare? But its just a cover for taking water out.. They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. In fact it should be getting smaller, more sustainable and thats what youre seeing play out on the land right now. The curriculum is being created by Noemi Donoso, the chief of education for the Chicago public schools before Lynda recruited her to Wonderful. As a relative newcomer, Vidovich said he angered Boswell when he outbid the company on Westlake Farms, one of the oldest and largest farms in California, with valuable access to groundwater and Kings River flows. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. The uncle died at age 22 fighting in Afghanistan. Lupe knocks on his door, and he invites us in. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. But Vidovich has a history of selling and shipping water outside the valley, so some locals dont trust him. His father met his mother, the cantors daughter, and they married. For years, agriculture has been given a wide berth when it comes to monopolistic practices. Vicente Fernndez, the king of Ranchera music, is crooning to no one, but it wont be this way in 30 minutes, Hussein tells me. I now hear whispers of water belonging to farmers two counties away being pumped out of the ground and hijacked in the dead of night to irrigate the nuts of Lost Hills. The GPS tells me to take Interstate 5, the fastest route through the belly of the state, but Im partial to Highway 99, the old road that brought the Okies and Mexicans to the fields and deposited a twang on my Armenian tongue. Because Lupe had no papers, she followed the coyote for many more miles until they reached a steep pass. I dont know how Hershey did Hershey, Pennsylvania, but Lynda is present in every painted sunburst, every planted flower, every blade of grass. So now theyre doing everything they can to frustrate my ability to utilize the property, said Vidovich. The Newsom Water Resilience Portfolio has seven investment principles, none of which includes the actions of water entrepreneurs, such as farmer John Vidovich who has been trying to put together a voluntary speculative groundwater market in Kern County for dry years. Not a single one of them wants any part of Wonderful. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. He thinks Ive understated the crop.. His accountant suggested he buy apartments. I know I cant do this forever, he says. Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. The speech of his parents and grandparents, the Yiddish-inflected New York with its humors and cut-to-the-quick impatiences, had not left his own speech in the half-century since hed come to California. Developer, farmer and water trader John Vidovich plans to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore according to a preliminary application filed with the county. She is here and there, but I have never seen her up close. She wanted me to put our $5 million in an account, draw interest, and we could live happily on the 50 grand a year.. Other billionaires getting behind Biden are investor Haim Saban, worth $2.9 billion, DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, worth $1 billion, and Signum Global Advisors founder Charles Myers whose net worth is unknown. One cousin arrived only last week. The front gates of the 25,000-square-foot Beaux Arts mansion on Sunset Boulevard magically opened without a guard giving a nod. My father, born in a vineyard outside Fresno, was a raisin grower before he became a bar owner. Its gone, I say. Seventy-five years ago, writer Carey McWilliams, in Factories in the Field, lambasted the ribboned Dukes and belted Barons of California agriculture. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. Together, the Resnicks have wedded the valleys hidebound farming culture with L.A.s celebrity culture. The stacks of bottles gave him no answer. If youve ever had Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful pomegranate juice or Halo mandarin oranges, youve had produce grown on one of the largest farms in the world. Ron DeSantis isn't returning his calls . The tule fog sets down again in the valley. Falling groundwater levels are stressing their wells. Like J.W. Lisa M. Krieger is a Bay Area News Group science writer for The Mercury News and East Bay Times, covering research, scientific policy and environmental news from Stanford University, the University of California, NASA-Ames, U.S. Geological Survey and other Bay Area-based research facilities. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. You rely on Marketplace to break down the worlds events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. The pipeline project is suspended while the two sides battle in court. No one is out and about. This water basically came from a land owned by someone whos also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. Hes carrying 55,000 pounds of crop in two swaggering trailers open to the sun. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. Lynda assisted her with the design and color scheme but otherwise has remained hands-off. I saw her a few months ago. It was Lynda who came up with the idea of flowers-in-a-gift. Roses are short-lived, she reasoned, but the teapot or watering can that the flowers arrive in is a keepsake. There before me, two aluminum pipes, side by side, 12 inches in diameter each, slither in the sun. To the growers, it must feel like a jab in the stomach. She was in her late 20s, almost a decade younger than Stewart, and the mother of two children. We are creating foods. Nothing keeps prices high like a monopoly. Groundwater agencies up and down the San Joaquin Valley had to file plans with the Department of Water Resources earlier this year showing . Dont let his boots, blue jeans, and ball cap fool you, the old-timers say. The deed had been done in a series of hidden meetings in Monterey. In fact, the piece is called A kingdom from dust. Its a pretty dry place right? This is Twisselman. The vibration here isnt quite as vehement. The aqueduct was built with tax money, yes? We want good groundwater, too., You mean no more pipelines carrying water in the dead of night?, The pipeline. He stammers a bit. A portion of his wages will be set aside each month to pay down the debt. The Cutie and the Halo are now warring in the fields outside the Visalia Convention Center. They were selling 2,500 acres of oranges and lemons and a packing house for a third of their appraised value, Resnick said. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire." "But those two guys hate each other." "Not anymore. If I want to know more, I need to talk to Lupes brother, Gustavo, who has worked as an irrigator at Wonderful for five years and knows what the company is planning for the future. The wide-open middle of California did its lullaby on me again. The construction of the pipeline forced the irrigation districts hand, launching a lawsuit to halt Angiolas water exports at one point to the tune of 30,000 acre-feet annually. Id have to say that fully half of my success has been luck. It becomes something else as soon as they encounter their workers in another guiseas a fellow shopper at Costco or as the parents of the kid who goes to school with their kid. Title. Alex Tavlian is the Executive Editor of The San Joaquin Valley Sun and Executive Director of Valley Future Foundation. Six hundred pistachio growers in blue jeans isnt her usual crowd. The calculation and hubris inside it. Mobil and Texaco and Prudential Life were willing to practically give the ground and trees away. A woman named Lupe is standing above me on the wooden stairway that climbs to the front door of her trailer. Lupe gave birth to two daughters, U.S. citizens, who are now 11 and 6. I get out of the car and walk down an embankment. General Partner. You sure this isnt 18 tons an acre? he says, goading. One mile, two miles, three miles, fourit keeps going until it reaches another county and back to one of the main canals in the Dudley Ridge Water District. On a Facebook page with postings in Spanish, they offer a glimpse of life inside pistachio world. They give thanks for a job that provides decent wages and access to a free wellness center next door staffed by a full-time doctor, physicians assistant, registered dietitian, and marriage and family therapist. He was about my size, but he was very tough. The company operates the most wells in the lake basin and the deepest ones. Brad Steinwede. It was a hit. The choices for the Kern farmer now come down to two: He can reach deep into his pocket and buy high-priced water from an irrigation district with surplus supplies. This is a big crop, the field man tells me. Theres no issue with the pipeline.. Ive told them all no. This is a company that runs its resources to the max, he tells me. The bloodless ones stay away. By the time he drove back, he was a citrus grower. It goes to doctors and nurses, trainers and dietitians, who track the weight of workers, prod them to exercise, and wean them off soda and tortillas. Im a billionaire. Hes got an awful temper hes trying to control through Kabbalah. Its John Vidovich. If I follow them north through Resnick pomegranates, I can find out where the water is coming from. The courtship of Stewart and Lynda went fast. It might be nice if my kids and grandkids could turn to a book someday and read about what weve built., He and Lynda were changing the way food was grown in California and sold to the world. It sure looks heavier than last year., Bernard smiles and nods to the others. Boswell, who owned more land and controlled more water than any other person in the West for most of the 20th century. When nature bites down hard, and the government flow gets reduced to a trickle, growers in Kern turn on their pumps and reach deeper into the earth. As a class of people, the farmers and real estate developers harbor a deep-down contempt for what they have built. The water will be stripped from the land and sold to developers of new towns both here and over the mountain. While water has been moved, bought, sold and traded in California for decades, most deals have typically involved small supplies. A California developer, farmer, and water buyer, John Vidovich, is seeking approval to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore on what appears to be a 789-acre project located along Highway 41, just south of Highway 198. . You cant be exporting groundwater from one basin to another., Whatever water hes taking, its too little, too late.. A parched Southern California suburb looking to keep up with a booming population. And its even worse for the children in Kings County. Not long before, Vidovich was trying to grab water from Resnick, not give it. The checks the workers bring in here from Mr. Resnick are the same checks they bring in for years. A day later, I get a call from Mr. Resnick. Financial Data. The citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. He doesnt wave me off or give chase. To top it off, the greedy SOB (farmers rarely uttered Vidovichs name) intended to keep his 7,000 acres of nut trees in Dudley Ridge.
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