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Theyve (Vidovich and Hurley) been way out front on SGMA, Mitchell said. It cracks open and out pops the head shot of Stewart Resnick in a pistachio green tie. He blames Iran. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. And the Resnicks run the place, thats where this story gets conflicted and very complicated because in the last five to eight years they have committed millions and millions of dollars to making this place better educating the children, helping the workers deal with obesity and things like that. Bernards eyes are fixed straight ahead. He was dressed in the latest slim-fit style. I gaze out the passenger window, looking for the glint of the pipeline. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. So everybody should have it, right? The William Saroyan Theatre was packed that October 1996 night. To read more copy and paste or select. He came to California in the 1950s to remake himself. The new plant, the size of seven super Walmarts and built at a cost of $300 million, rises out of a clearing like an apparition. A restaurant built by Wonderful for the purpose of making the company town look better from the roadside may enjoy a more forgiving bottom line than, say, the Subway up the road. He lives down the road in Wasco, the Rose Capital of America, though the roses, too, have turned to nuts. If you study his moves, you can see a method to the acres he is accumulating. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. She was a very frugal lady. So so sleepy, says another. Its his pipe, not mine. Though he also acknowledged that during the drought he sold some to fellow Dudley Ridge landowner Stewart Resnick, who owns the massive Wonderful Company. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. As the head of a quasi-public agency, he knows he cant completely blow off my questions. Bruce Springsteen turned it into a song on his Ghost of Tom Joad album. I was 16, and his packing house was my first job, a baptism into the money, money, money world of the men who grew fruit and the men who sold it. The money was too easy. Perched up there, a queen might peek out and utter, Let them eat cake, Lynda once said. Fiefdom. The Boswell comments are in a letter sent from the El Rico GSA, while Vidovich's concerns are outlined in a letter from the Southwest Kings GSA.. Page met Vidovich in 2005 when Page was farming 400 acres out near Wasco. High 53F. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. Notifications from this discussion will be disabled. She seems a little nervous waiting in the wings. Now, hes involved in a project that could set him up as a water marketer on an extreme scale. One cousin arrived only last week. I head straight into the glare of the sun shooting over the Coast Range. Central Californias family raisin farms are drying up, Commercial bees, the unsung heroes of the nut business, Drought has California farms destroying crops, rather than pay for water, A California farm battles drought: Were out here trying to survive, Farm country frets over impact of John Deere strike, Inside the trial of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes, Californias drought takes a toll on the states clothing manufacturers, Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. The checks the workers bring in here from Mr. Resnick are the same checks they bring in for years. The price for pistachios has climbed from $4.50 a pound to an unbelievable $5.25 a pound. California growers, in the grip of drought, have produced 900 million pounds of the green nut. Neighbors dont tell on neighbors.. Their concern is where Vidovich is taking the groundwater. Semitropic Water Storage District, in northwestern Kern, has raised a lot of eyebrows with its ambitious, some say audacious, Tulare Lake Storage and Floodwater Protection Project. Shes designing the curriculum.. He was short, bull-like, and didnt take crap from anyone. Thats why he built the pipeline. Where the pipes butt up against Twisselman Road, a more clever bit of engineering is required. Vidovich says his quote was clipped and sewn back together to make it sound bad. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. I remind him of the time we spent together eight years earlier in his Sunset House. Summer or not, theyre dressed in shirt layered upon shirt and the same no-name dusty blue jeans. My dust cloud tells him Im getting close. Lynda is also mapping out a farm-to-food program where students will grow fruits, vegetables, and grains on a plot of village land. When pressed, though, they acknowledged it could be done. More than one ballad was about the valley, so he came to Fresno. About five years ago, Lynda started our community development organization in Lost Hills, and the journey has been an amazing one. The fight between the Tulare Lake Canal Company, controlled by the J.G. You can plant only so many acres on ground that has no groundwater. Most Los Altos residents don't know it, but one of their neighbors known locally as a developer and political candidate moonlights as a farmer, one currently receiving a dose of notoriety. A husband and wife sharing the reins is rare for corporate America, rarer still for industrial agriculture. Its bringing water from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. I ask him how the drought has affected Wonderful. His father bought a neighborhood bar and ran it with the same iron fist with which he ran the house. Arax: That is the question that you know Im dealing with in this magazine piece. Each square-mile section is divided into blocks, and each block counts a precise number of rows. For now, shes playing country western music on the sound system and trying to lure a combination of oil-field workers, supervisors at Wonderful, and travelers driving the last miles of James Dean. I didnt grow up here, but if it wasnt for California, its openness and opportunities, I wouldnt be sitting where Im sitting., No other farmer, not even Gallo, had cornered a market the way Resnick had cornered the growing, buying, processing, and selling of pistachios. According to published articles, Vidovich comes from a Silicon Valley family, and he bought his first Kings County property in a foreclosure in 1994. Im a billionaire. Hes got an awful temper hes trying to control through Kabbalah. A minute later, I reconnect with the pipeline and pursue its length for a football field. Vidovich is the owner of Sandridge Partners, LP - a farmland investment firm that has undertaken more than 100,000 acres of Valley farmland. In my lifetime alone, California has gone from 13 million people to 40 million people. Youre the one who needs to see., We pull out of the parking lot, past the palm trees and roses, and head up the thin ribbon of Highway 33 into the dust-swirling tunnel of nuts and fruits. accounts and the history behind a news event. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. Your account number is your one-line street address as printed on your newspaper use normal capitalization. Rather, they say, theyre harvesting health and happiness around the world through our iconic consumer brands. Their crops arent crops but heart-healthy snacks and life-extending elixirs. Whether its Fresno or Kings or Tulare or Kern counties, hes grabbing land where the groundwater is plenty or a river runs through it or the aqueduct spills its north-to-south flow. "In talking to the planning department, I found out that the initial step is to notify essential agencies in the area for comments. The south valleyits people and poverty, its obesity and diabetesis her newest mission. Theres no garbage piled high and smoldering, no chickens picking at scratch. SGMA refers to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed in 2014 that mandates water basins be in balance by 2040. On vacation in the south of France, he heard about a farming company called Paramount that needed a buyer for some of its orchards in Kern County. "I am a farmer and a big farmer," Vidovich said. Indeed, as president of the board, Vidovich has a great deal of influence in directing much of the water districts business. No rain in five years. It must have wounded all the more because she and Stewart thought of themselves as progressive Democrats. His trees were drinking from the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, from rivers and irrigation canals and the water bank. Vidovich owns the property in question, and he is well known in Valley circles. In the years of plentiful rains and heavy snowmelt, the bank fills up with more than 1 million acre-feet of stored water. The courtship of Stewart and Lynda went fast. It was good for the bottom line. Before anything gets built, Kings County planners will study the project, and county officials will likely hire a consultant for an environmental impact study (CEQA). The independent growers and processors, no surprise, regarded him as a bully eager to employ teams of lawyers and tens of millions of dollars to force his agenda. When it doesnt come, he finds a way to make it come. He spits tobacco juice into the empty can of Rockstar. She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. The aqueduct brings the water, yes? (See sidebar online.). Surely, no one does this better than Wonderful? Chance of rain 40%. All but a handful come from Mexico. Theyre droughts best buddies.. China, for one, prefers the Iranian pistachio. I dont know. He points to the young almond trees that envelop his 20 acres like a siege. She divorced her husband in 1968 and began dating Anthony Russo, who worked at the RAND think tank in Santa Monica with military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. But those 20,000 acres near the town of Pixley came with an endowment: a little spit of earth that produced endless amounts of groundwater. At issue? He didnt know where to begin. When he was told there were fields upon fields, he did not believe there could be this many fields. The oil companies and insurance companies were looking to unload their farms in Kern County, Steir learned, chunks of earth that measured 20,000 and 40,000 acres. What is the phone number of Vidovich John - De Anza Properties? This project may not be fully thought out," said Neves. No luck. I would have worn my Levis, he says, but Lyndas here, and she thinks I dress like a bum. Were standing in the sun outside the plants corporate office, a building whose clean lines and retro furniture wear the imprint of Lynda, too. The court settlement allows him to take the water to Dudley Ridge, but it cant go outside Kings County. This is the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Big fish eat the small fish here. Even if he has access to the California Aqueduct, Vidovich would have to jump through a lot of state hoops to move water independently of Semitropic. The Kings is as erratic a river as the Kern so floodwaters are unpredictable. 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. "Would I build there if I had the money? How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. John Vidovich is VP/Executive Director:Sales at Student Loan Corp. See John Vidovich's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Unlike the almond, the pistachio is moist and combustible. Still, he insists that it doesn't belong near the city and college. Water that he will take, critics fear, and eventually sell to Southern California cities. What the Resnicks were doing for Lost Hills, though, was a level of philanthropy I had never witnessed in the valley. He doesnt know about the pipeline. Then some of the money we save goes to pay the coyote. The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. It isnt a lot of water., Im not going to give you the numbers. The grass is a color green on the verge of blue, and the cutouts for trees are razor etched. Pink and white oleanders divide the highway, and every third vehicle that whooshes by is a big rig. "The city will be issuing a response to the feedlot proposal," said Lemoore City Manager Nathan Olson. Lynda sent the first batches of POM, week after week, as gifts to David Bowie, Rupert Murdoch, and Disney head Michael Eisner. The dam ends up holding and the levees, too. She is small with lively brown eyes and a sweet but confident voice. It becomes scorn because they cant allow it to become pity or self-hatred. Vidovich is, after all, a powerful landowner in the Central Valley. As she announces the newest gift, the men and women in the back of the crowd smile and applaud politely and try not to show their faces to the publicity crew she has brought with her to film the event. He holds a little more than 100,000 acres in Kings County, 40,000 acres in Kern, and 10,000 acres in Tulare County. The hillocks that existed back in Yokut Indian days were flattened by a hunk of metal called the Fresno Scraper. She deftly places her body between him and me. Get an email notification whenever someone contributes to the discussion. But if he thinks youre defying him, hell start with, Nobody realizes the good Ive done for agriculture. Then he moves on to, Do you know who I am? And one Kern County water district could be the linchpin to it all. None of the sales taxes go to City Hall because Lost Hills isnt a city. The pizza dough is cauliflower, too. SpanishStyle Oxtail Stew Recipe. The land to him isnt real. No bee can penetrate the shield, and his mandarins remain seedless. He wouldnt know one of his Valencia orange groves from one of his Washington navel orange groves. Scott: So we should talk about the labor that makes this all possible. Down a rutted road, 100 trailers with foundations dressed in plywood back up against an orchard. I try to calculate how many hundreds of aluminum sections need to be linked seamlessly, or at least watertight, to cover the distance of a mile. The Southwest Kings GSA is chaired by John Vidovich, who runs Sandridge Partners, which owns hundreds of thousands throughout the San Joaquin Valley. "Ten percent of farmers get 70 percent of the payment," Perez said. They arrive in Chevy trucks and Dodge vans and spill out in groups of four or five under the sweat-stained hats of the 49ers, Penn State, and the Yankees. Lynda built sidewalks and storm drains, the new park and community center, and repaved the roads. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. The suit alleges that then-Fire Marshal John Vidovich implemented an "Operation Catch-up" program in which he used untrained and inexperienced inspectors to perform duties after media reports that the LAFD had thousands of overdue inspections. The water sent to Kern County1.4 million acre-feet a yearhas doubled the cropland. In any event, Vidovich fallowed his Angiola land and took its groundwater about 25 miles west to his Dudley Ridge lands. It sure looks heavier than last year., Bernard smiles and nods to the others. Under his leadership, Buena Vista has installed a pipeline system to reduce reliance on canals, which lose a lot of water to seepage and the district has become extremely active in buying up land for water banking. It comes out like pee, says her 11-year-old daughter. The white flowers have set into buds, and the buds have become baby almonds covered in fuzz. What spikes blood sugar more than a can of Coke? But this is water for Mr. Resnick. Ive never seen her up close, never watched her in action. He has painted the interior and put down two new patterns of linoleum, one to mark the living room and the other to mark the kitchen. As far as the company can tell, no active salmonella has ever traced back to the plant. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. I saw horrible things, Margarita says. I feel too good to give any of it up.. The Sotos made a name for themselves in Lost Hills by taking their taco trucks into the agricultural fields. Marketplace host Amy Scott spoke with Mark Arax, who wrote an articlein The California Sunday Magazine about the Wonderful Companys farming business and issues of sustainability in the Central Valley. Add onion, garlic, and bell pepper to the pot; cook, stirring constantly, until onion has . These are loaded, Resnick says. This hasnt convinced the people of Lost Hills, however. How much was plunder? Who would have thought that people would be asking their bartender to fix them a Pomtini? he said. Theyre no longer in danger. He does enough farming in the area to make it look like hes a farmer. But most of this water has been spent by the Resnicks and other account holders in years two, three, and four of the drought. Hes farming water. They dont do agribusiness. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. California showed me why.. Scott: How sustainable is this operation given that California only recently came out of a long drought and may actually be headed there again soon? It isnt going down because he wont let it go down. Conceived by Lynda, it cost one fortune to build and a second fortune to light up. Thirty-five percent of our pre-diabetic population has gone into the healthy range, she tells the team. Vidovich wrote out a check for the full amount, then went looking for the water to prop up Resnicks monopoly. 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