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. Agriculture in the south valley has extended far beyond the provisions of its one river, the Kern. "When commodity prices are at record highs, it is irresponsible to increase government subsidy rates for 15 crops, subsidize additional crops and provide payments that further distort markets.". Its gambling. I call the manager of the Lost Hills Water District. No whistle shouts mealtime in the modern-day company town. John Vidovich will tell you hes the interloper who came over the other mountain, the Coast Range. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. The eye numbed by the tedium of orchards isnt prepared for the 1.3 million square feet of industrial assault, though the palm trees and roses along the perimeter try for a transition. April 17, 2020. John Vidovich just wants to farm, he says. They were pushing plates, costume jewelry, perfume, and model cars. The ceiling, all sheetrock and spackling, remains a work in progress. Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. The Wheat King begets the Cattle King, and the Cattle King begets the Cotton King, and the Cotton King begets the Nut King and Pomegranate Queen. Want to book a hotel in California? Theres a mythology out there that Angiola is stealing water, he said. At the east end, where the highway meets Interstate 5, the traveler gets a choice. Rather, it is the authority vested in Wonderful that counts. Yeah, hes got a lot of money and hes been buying up land, makes some people nervous, Page said. Lynda is also mapping out a farm-to-food program where students will grow fruits, vegetables, and grains on a plot of village land. According to news reports, he owns Sandridge Partners, LP, a farmland investment firm that has accumulated more than 100,000 acres of Valley farmland in recent years. He had left for the cornfields a few minutes before the killings.. 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. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. The tumbleweeds on open ground give you a peek into what Lost Hills looked like before the aqueduct made a river here. Lupe says no one in her family, and none of her friends living in the trailer park or on the other side of town, drinks the water that comes out of the pipe. Vidovich shrugged it off, saying the flaw amounted to putting the descriptions on the wrong pages and quickly appealed. The Resnick story certainly deserved a book, but did he really want me to be the one to write it? When they get on their high horse, you dont want to argue with them.. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. One way or the other, we got rid of our last farm a few years before I was born and moved to the Fresno suburbs. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. His father grew grapes, cherries, and apricots in the Santa Clara Valley back when Stanford University still had a reason to be known as The Farm. "The issue is the location. He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. Theyll take home $11 an hour for their labors. It makes interesting reading. Every mogul, every movie star. For as far as I can see, the water in the canal runs inky through the orchards. Page met Vidovich in 2005 when Page was farming 400 acres out near Wasco. There are plans, crazy as it sounds, to take out 10,000 acres of almonds. I grab my notebook and walk up to one of the vans. Movies. Russo and Ellsberg needed a place to photocopy the 7,000 pages, and Lynda volunteered the Xerox machine at her ad agency on Melrose Avenue. In the kitchen corner, cases of bottled water are stacked halfway up the wall. Inside, a trainer watches over a line of treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bikes. My life is about California. You sure this isnt 18 tons an acre? he says, goading. Yes, the pipeline belongs to Resnick. 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. This is how the land of Wonderful is keeping alive its trees. 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. 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. On our trips to Disneyland, I must have blinkered my eyes heading down 99. Number two, Angiola is trying to maintain the local aquifer by retiring land to limit pumping. A large water pipeline being built near Lemoore in Kings County is raising eyebrows as much for its possible uses as for the name associated with its construction John Vidovich. The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. The water will be stripped from the land and sold to developers of new towns both here and over the mountain. United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955 Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. The wildfires cant be far behind. 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. Of all the wonders of Wonderful, this is the one I find most mystifying. As we sat down to chat, one of his assistants leaned over and whispered into his jewel-studded ear. For years, agriculture has been given a wide berth when it comes to monopolistic practices. Except when you plug John Vidovichs name into the equation. 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. John Vidovich serves as the Vice President, Business Development of Discover. We'd love to hear eyewitness If their fears come true, the Los Angeles water grab in Owens Valley would pale in comparison. Nothing changes. Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. I walk to another part of the orchard and watch phase two. The rain starts to fall, big, fat, slashing drops that feel like electricity on my open palm. 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. 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? Residential. "The plan is to hold a special meeting on Tuesday, then submit," he explained to The Leader via a text. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. Though the project is billed as flood control, the agreement also allows Vidovich to move groundwater. . Arax: So because there is no groundwater out in Lost Hills, they came up with this idea of pumping groundwater from 40, 50 miles away. Brown oxtail in batches and set aside. Hundreds of giant praying mantises standing on platforms of concrete are pulling oil from a Chevron field. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. A bunch of trees are going dry, he says. Have we gone too far? Bankers and their fair-weather financing exasperated Resnick. The concept changed the industry. He remade himself into a graduate of the UCLA law school, a cleaner of Los Angeles buildings, a vendor of security alarms, a seller of flowers in a pot, a minter of Elvis plates and Princess Diana dolls, a bottler of Fiji Island water, a farmer of San Joaquin Valley dirt. My old well cant compete with his new wells. Activate your all-inclusive access for print subscribers: Link your losaltosonline.com account to your print subscription here. And, you know, at some point in time that water is in risk of going to an urban area. Lupe and I walk to the far side of the trailer park to find Gustavo. And then they pump more groundwater. The sale got under the skin of valley farmers. He was headed to the fields at the same time that another farmworker, drunk on beer, was coming home from the fields. The fog is our history. The State Water Project that allowed western Kern County to grow into a farming behemoth has given no water or very little water over the past three years amid the worst drought in California history. Vidovich is the owner of Sandridge Partners, LP - a farmland investment firm that has undertaken more than 100,000 acres of Valley farmland. Big fish eat the small fish here. He found it. I hop out of the car. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. He gambled on the price of nuts going up, and he gambled on the water never going dry. Sandridge Partners plans new beef processing plant | John Lindt They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. Compulsive gambler and alcoholic. His first wife, the mother of his two sons and daughter, told him she was quite happy living in their $30,000 condo in Culver City. They have no way to grasp the $50 million to $80 million a year that the Resnicks say they are spending on philanthropy. Thirty-five percent of our pre-diabetic population has gone into the healthy range, she tells the team. How much water are we talking about?, Id rather not get too specific. He was the bad guy in agriculture for no bigger offense than that he was big. It was the early 1900s, and his grandfather and grandmother decided to secure passage to America. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. They married in 1972, and he sold the alarm company for $100 million. Im 80 years old. He had spent the morning on his exercise bike reading Fortune. Do they sense the shaming about to come? When its Pablos turn, he hands Hussein a check for $437, and Hussein counts out $433 back to him in cash. Its gone, I say. This water basically came from a land owned by someone who's also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. It isnt going down because he wont let it go down. Vidovich is, after all, a powerful landowner in the Central Valley. True, Angiolas canal stops about 23 miles southeast of the project.
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