Nearly $365 million worth of Wonderful almonds will have dropped down from the dry sky. Each mound is fed into an even bigger machine whose teeth pulverize the trees and make sawdust. There is a local water bank, a kind of underground lake, that the Resnicks control. He had no intention of farming it, either. This is where the pistachios, 400 truckloads a day, 50 days of harvest, come to be weighed, washed, peeled, dried, gassed, sorted, salted, roasted, packaged, and shipped out to the world. tupperware garlic keeper g2c advantages and disadvantages. Ninety-nine is the deadliest highway in America. Its been more than a year since he gave me the cold shoulder at the pistachio conference. Thats when the Resnicks decided to sell the concept of wellness to their 4,300 employees throughout the valley the same way they sell workplace safety. Our relatives have been patient. He worries because there isnt enough water now to properly irrigate the almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates. They hide from the fact that it relies on the subjugation of peasants from Mexico they themselves have brought here. The colors turn brilliant in the light made spectacular by the particles of dust. It moves in a wave from trunk to limb to nut and back down to earth. Down the great aqueduct, by freight of politics and gravity, came the excess waters of the Sacramento River. He could collect the rents while he slept. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. Yeah, hes got a lot of money and hes been buying up land, makes some people nervous, Page said. It becomes scorn because they cant allow it to become pity or self-hatred. If the workers doubt the benefit of the enzymes from apple cider vinegar, video banners stream a continuous message of bad food habits to be broken and body mass indexes to be measured and met. What to give a grieving widow and her five children in Lost Hills but drinking water? I dont believe we should be sending water to LA, he said. Ive never given an interview to a newspaper or magazine before. But that still doesnt mean that most people in town can afford to eat here. 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 continuous rattle feeds the nuts into a series of bins on the backside of the tractor. On one side of the road and the other, for miles in both directions, the dirt belongs to Wonderful. Nowhere to turn, I turn back around and roll down my window. Making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process?. Somehow, it made its way to Lynda. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Once, he came home from school and discovered the family car gone. Pink and white oleanders divide the highway, and every third vehicle that whooshes by is a big rig. Wow. One of his frat brothers was a wealthy kid whose father ran a janitorial business. It is flowing to a place of dire thirst. 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? And I want to keep farming.. Observers worry that Vidovich plans to pump Kings and Tulare counties dry, park that water in Kern County and then sell it to the highest bidder in dry years, leaving a once-thriving farm district barren. The concept changed the industry. And how will the Resnicks fare? According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a farm bill supporter, nearly 75 percent of the bill's $300 billion will aid nutrition programs such as food stamps and emergency food providers and provide free fresh fruits and vegetables in public schools. It took time to gain the respect of the people, and I was afraid. The land to him isnt real. Hes using it to irrigate his almonds and pistachios in Lost Hills. Highway 46 shoots past Resnick almonds and takes you straight into town, population 1,938. Boswell farming company pumps there too. 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. State or federal water isnt enough. Theyre dusty with San Joaquin dirt. Fallowing the farm until the footprint gets smaller and smaller. Every time I see it, Im inspired and proud of what weve been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. This is a forgotten community. Absolutely not. Young men and women from Teach for America will do their two-year stints at the complex and live in village housing. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. Im down.. From now on, theyll grow on land that offers a double protection against drought. How can this be? He leveled its hog wallows, denuded its salt brush, and killed the last of its mustang, antelope, and tule elk. The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom wont last forever. Only after the media were alerted did Stewart and Lynda claim to have discovered the clear-cutting. Arrayed before him were small bowls of almonds, pistachios, and easy-to-peel mandarins, a plate of ground white turkey meat cooked in olive oil, and a glass of pomegranate juice. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. You sure this isnt 18 tons an acre? he says, goading. John Vidovich is scion of his family's development firm, De Anza Properties, which owns Rancho Shopping Center and is renovating Los Altos Gardens. He had moved out to Long Beach, bought some property, and built one of those new strip malls. On the shallow bottom, the women fished mussels and clams with their toes. At Highland Park High, he excelled in math and struggled in English. Everyone knew where it was going. This was Lost Hills before Lynda got involved. It specifically set aside $2.7 billion for water storage projects. I feel too good to give any of it up.. 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. On the way out, the voice in their head, Lyndas voice, goads them to give one more hour to the Wonderful Fitness Center. Amy Scott: Theres a stunning aerial photo in the magazine that shows these green green trees surrounded basically by dust. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. Theres a mountain range to my left and a mountain range to my right and in between a plain flatter than Kansas where crop and sky meet. This was how a billionaire who needed more water did politics. There is nothing here, one of the townsfolk told Gibler. Or is he just the newest water baron on the block? This was Lost Hills, where the people are dependent on the Resnicks from cradle to grave. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. One of his films, The Blob, became a cult classic, and they lived in a house on the Westside with two Rolls-Royces in the garage. Kingdom. Still, he was starting to think about his legacy, and thats why he finally agreed to meet with me. U.S. immigration has little say-so here. John Vidovich serves as the Vice President, Business Development of Discover. Hes not only able to irrigate his nut trees with an imported flow of groundwater40,000 acre-feet in some years. Use the 'Report' link on Wonderful has enough water to irrigate its orchards in Lost Hills and park tens of thousands of acre-feet in the water bank. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. 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 we hop down from the van to inspect the pomegranates on the eve of harvest, Resnick motions to Bernards belly. Hes a 61-year-old developer who grew up on a farm in Sunnyvale in the heart of what would become the Silicon Valley. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. John Vidovich and the Discover executive team are rated an A- by 65 employees. Whether those pipes end on Vidovich lands or Resnicks is hard to know. They rely only on rain, which concentrates the flavorful oils. Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. Once he finished grabbing the flow of the five rivers that ran across the plain, he used his turbine pumps to seize the water beneath the ground. 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. Together, the Resnicks have wedded the valleys hidebound farming culture with L.A.s celebrity culture. 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. Already, Wonderful has bulldozed 8,000 to 10,000 acres of pomegranate trees over the past few years to send more water to its nuts. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. In exchange, the state would get banking rights in Semitropic, said General Manager Jason Gianquinto. To fix the subsidence, and keep the town dry in the next flood, residents and the state prison are having to pay $10 million in extra taxes. Altogether, Resnick has purchased 300,000 acre-feet of water from farmers and water districtsat a cost of $200 millionto cover his shortfall during the drought. As for making a major water grab in the Central Valley, Page said Vidovich has nothing on the Wonderful or JG Boswell companies, both of which have far larger land holdings than Vidovich. Or he can devise a scheme to steal water from a neighbor up the road. John Vidovich. Where he takes the water is none of my business., Hes taking it into his orchards in Kern. She won a gold Effie, advertisings Oscar. The Sureos gang has tagged the front entrance but otherwise has left the inside unmarked. How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. By the time he drove back, he was a citrus grower. Lynda is making the trip on the company jet more often these days. Across the street, the Soto family has built a new Mexican restaurant named Gabbys that dwarfs every other business on the street with its Spanish Mission faade. I study the terrain. Both men saw Hurleys involvement in numerous local districts including Angiola, Deer Creek Storm Water District, Green Valley Water District and the Tri-County Water Authority, a newly formed GSA, as more Vidovich control. As he bled the aquifer dry, he called on the government to bring him an even mightier river from afar. He was short, bull-like, and didnt take crap from anyone. Bankers and their fair-weather financing exasperated Resnick. Who anticipates that you cant fill a water bank for six or seven years?, Come on, I say. They settled in Brooklyn among Jews who had fled their own pogroms, and his grandfather went into the needle-and-embroidery trade. Me, Im a carpetbagger from Beverly Hills. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. Vidovich made an offer on the land and Page took it. And Vidovich ended up pumping water an extraordinary amount of water out of. I know I cant do this forever, he says. Fussing with one input or another, he can produce 3,500 pounds of nuts an acre. "Would I build there if I had the money? The price for pistachios has climbed from $4.50 a pound to an unbelievable $5.25 a pound. You have no idea the people on my VIP list who drink it. Shes now providing tutors and counselors in every region of California to boost the graduation rate. What is the phone number of Vidovich John - De Anza Properties? They plaintiffs' lawyers argued that Vidovich pursued the McCarthy water to offset the $73 million sell-off, even though he knew that it was already spoken for. Everything about our physical selves, Lynda believes, begins in our guts. Vidovich digs 17 new wells, several to the depth of 1,400 feet, and pumps groundwater into ditches and canals that move the flow across miles of flat lake bed. The dam ends up holding and the levees, too. 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. "The issue is the location. From the east side of Tulare County to the west side of Fresno County, theyre planting more nuts and Halos. He was tough on the outside. 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. 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. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. The big-rig drivers are cranky two ways, and the farmworkers in their last-leg vans are half-asleep. Right there in the big canal of the Dudley Ridge Water District. Rain likely. 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. Iranian pistachios show up in Tel Aviv as nuts from Turkey. Vidovich threatened that all FPB members critical of "Operation Catch-Up" or who spoke to . PRIVACY POLICY. What the Resnicks were doing for Lost Hills, though, was a level of philanthropy I had never witnessed in the valley. The baby is now a 20-year-old student at Bakersfield College. "This is the first step of a long journey. Its loaded, Bernard says. According to Lemoore's city manager, local officials will likely respond to the feedlot proposal at Tuesday's (Jan. 18) council meeting. Here, a crew has dug a culvert beneath the road and hiked the pipeline under the asphalt that divides one field from another. Keep it Courteous. Developers now had to identify a source of water before a city or county would green light their projects. Hurley, who also serves as general manager of Green Valley, said that basin, which is separate from the Tulare Lake basin, is actually in balance. Then he turned and faced me. Look, I delegate a lot of things, obviously. By the time he died an old man on his tractor in the Cupertino Hills, where he had planted grapes again and was making wine, the transformation of his valley by the silicon chip was complete. Join us for a free, virtual event for International Women's Day on March 8! The POM tanks, Im told, are backed up with a three-year supply. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. If that happens, theyll go down the highway, and hell lose the $1 he takes for every $100 worth of their checks. This was the same road that took me to Selma, the raisin capital of the world, to pack peaches and plums for Mel Girazian, my fathers old friend. Farm bill strikes local note with developer/farmer, losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase, Los Altos teen wins Food Network top prize, Los Altos teen stars as featured contestant on Food Networks Kids Baking Championship, Snow in the hills: Unusual weather (for Los Altos) brings white winter to area, Running the table: Bullis Charter sixth-grader rules his age group in table tennis, Outside Santa Clara County Annual Subscription, Outside Santa Clara County Monthly Subscription. On this same stretch of 99, I once wrote a story about farmworkers who moonlighted as meth cookers to make ends meet. 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. Typically, each pound sells wholesale for $4.25. No. Tonight, feeling no pain, hell sit in one of the strip clubs in Bakersfield and maybe buy himself a fancy lap dance.. There are plans, crazy as it sounds, to take out 10,000 acres of almonds. This is the route my grandfather, one of a legion of fruit tramps, took as he drifted from farm to farm in the 1920s picking crops. When we learned of the terrible situation, not to mention our poor reputation within the community, we were ashamed and are sorry, their official statement reads. Web Directions. One more hour and Im outta this fucking place.. Page met Vidovich in 2005 when Page was farming 400 acres out near Wasco. Vidovich is, after all, a powerful landowner in the Central Valley. Ive told them all no. The purpose of the Butcher's Corner Final EIR is to provide written responses to comments received on the Draft EIR.An electronic copy of the Final EIR, appendices and revised project plans are available on the project webpage at ButchersCorner.InSunnyvale.com.Hard copies of the Final EIR also available for review at City Hall, the Sunnyvale Public . Why not California? Mitchell agreed, giving Vidovich credit for seeing where groundwater laws were headed before anyone else. "What I was most alarmed about was how I, and most people in the area, knew nothing of this proposal," he told The Leader. Subscribers keep our independent community news in business. A skill his detractors say hes used to maneuver water away from its rightful place to his own benefit. He owns the land next to the aqueduct where the reservoir would be built and is the one who brought the floodwater project idea to Semitropic a few years ago. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. Sure enough, cozied up next to the bank of the aqueduct, I see a glint. The land is turning to salt. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. However, first-term councilmember Frank Gornick, West Hills College's longtime chancellor and one of the guiding forces behind the expansion of the college in Lemoore, says he isn't opposed to a feedlot and processing plant. Shes designing the curriculum.. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. Thats more than double the crop that Resnick boasted about when I saw him eight years ago. I pull over into the dirt of a pomegranate orchard, the ancient fruit that the Resnicks have turned into POMWonderful, the sweet purple juice inside a swell-upon-swell bottle. Hes planting ground that no one has ever planted before. A husband and wife sharing the reins is rare for corporate America, rarer still for industrial agriculture. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. Vidovich is known in the area for his political activity as well as his development projects. He was a big drinker, a big liver who loved the fast life. Then it hits me. The only water Green Valley got was some surplus state water and natural groundwater, Pace said. The boss showed him a storeroom filled with chemicals tossed here and there and told him to bring order to the mess. I park the car and walk in the direction of a scattering of buildings slapped together with stucco and corrugated tin. Its artificiality had achieved a permanence; its permanence had created my California. The 20-year-olds look like 20-year-olds; the 30-year-olds, like 40-year-olds; the 40-year-olds, like 60-year-olds. All told, 36 men operating six machines will harvest the orchard in six days. I dont know. This is a big crop, the field man tells me. Where the pipes butt up against Twisselman Road, a more clever bit of engineering is required. 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. This is Lynda.. The river is nothing if not fickle. In the kitchen corner, cases of bottled water are stacked halfway up the wall. Resnick also has lands just south of the Kings/Kern county line in Lost Hills and many of Vidovichs detractors believe thats where a lot of that Angiola groundwater is going. He packed his bags and left his wife and kids. A woman named Lupe is standing above me on the wooden stairway that climbs to the front door of her trailer. You rely on Marketplace to break down the worlds events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. But thats not an issue I deal with., I dont even know what it was, to be honest with you.. Scott: So you set out with this question: how was he defying nature? The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. When the rain returns, some of the ground will be replanted in pistachios, a tree that can better withstand drought. Under her rethink agriculture program, the kids will be trained in plant science and irrigation technology, marketing and sales. And then it hits me when I reach the road to Weedpatch, where my grandfathers story in Americaa poet on his hands and knees picking potatoesbegan. Not long before, Vidovich was trying to grab water from Resnick, not give it. The FDA sent a warning letter, and Wonderful pledged to study the chlorine levels in the bathing tanks. He landed a steady job with a big grower and a year later paid a coyote $5,000 to bring Lupe and their baby son to Lost Hills. The Tulare Lake Canal Company, controlled by JG Boswell Company, moved the equipment onto . Lupe and I walk to the far side of the trailer park to find Gustavo. This amounted to 14,000 acre-feet. TV Shows. Phone Number: (724) 495-**** John T Vidovich, age 84 View Full Report Address:***** Butternut Ridge Rd, Elyria, OH. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. The nuts are kept there a few more daysany longer and the ants will attack themto complete their drying. None of his three children had the slightest interest in taking over the company. The citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. If she has her way, they will go to college, too. Now in farming, were in a unique position. I was prepared to knock on the door, but a housekeeper, flanked by two blow-dried dogs, greeted me on the front steps and led me inside. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. As he drives off, he throws a clue out the window. A plume of dust joins up with other plumes of dust until the sky over the valley turns sickly. And he was able to use canals and pumping stations to then get that water in this pipeline that very secretively was connected to irrigation ditches in Lost Hills. Main Street is Highway 46, which slices through the middle of town. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. It was simply a place to park some money and have another opportunity. He drove to Delano, the farm town where Chavez and his union had made so much trouble and history. Among the graduating class are kids headed to Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth, and the state and community college systems. The water is filtered for arsenic, boron, and other salts, and the monthly tests show no violation of state or federal standards. Hes getting ready to introduce Lynda, the main speaker, but first he wants to address the federal governments recent recall of Wonderful pistachios. And its that groundwater part of Semitropics agreement with Vidovich that is raising hackles along with eyebrows. Except when you plug John Vidovichs name into the equation. Lived In Aliquippa PA, Monaca PA. Related To Michele Vidovich, Amy Vidovich. His 15 million trees in the San Joaquin Valley consume more than 400,000 acre-feet of water a year. He became more involved with De Anza, working with his dad, whom he describes as bigger than life.. Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. Later, Page would run for and win a seat on the Kern County Water Agency board. At the time, I was heavy with state water but the state water had low allocations and I had no other water source over there (Dudley Ridge land in western Kings County).. The aqueduct brings the water, yes? She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. Residential. But for every good-sized fruit, theres a bunch that never sized up. Resnick is giving him one of his looks. Twine strung trailer to trailer hangs with the laundry of fathers, mothers, and children. 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. 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 Kings is bone-dry as usual. 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. He turns out to be a kindly religious man whose short hair is dyed the black of shoe polish. Hes so involved, in fact, he even chairs the monthly meetings for Buena Vista Water Storage District where Sandridge owns thousands of acres. Her husband, Manuel, will awaken in 30 minutes to prepare for his night shift. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. He called it fake junk, sued, and won. 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. The Yokut had a saying that when the farmer drained the last drops of snowmelt from Tulare Lake, the water would return. The abundance of that water in good years has created this overreach of agriculture. I feel his gaze going past me, his voice turning oddly sentimental. But he got too big. On Oscar night, she handed out free samples to the stars at the Vanity Fair party. Then hed lose his temper and get the strap out.. Wages that used to go to workers stay in the pocket of the nut growers. I don't think it would ever be very comfortable if you had an embargo and were denied food.". I thwack both lines. For the next two or three seconds, the almonds pour down like hail. I call the manager of the Lost Hills Water District. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. This water basically came from a land owned by someone who's also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. The sentimental ones stay away. Upon graduation, he only needed to look across the Raritan River to find his college. They greet me with smiles and handshakes. Each time I called, his secretary hung up the phone. 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. The 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno has overturned a $73.4 million verdict against McCarthy Family Farms and Bay Area developer John Vidovich and Sandridge Partners involving a land and. Thats all fine and good, Resnick replied, but what about the $1 million-plus hed spent on lawyers fees? The punitive damage portion, about $73 million, was overturned on appeal and the case has been sent back to Kings County. Then the drug cartels took over the countryside and planted poppies. Water that he will take, critics fear, and eventually sell to Southern California cities. The aquifer either doesnt exist or is so befouled by salts that the water is poison. My life is about California. He had his hands on 65 percent of the nations crop. Two men sit inside separate cabins of a small tractor with pincers on one side and a catcher on the other. It was a hit. He worked as a gardener in Los Angeles and then heard about the almond trees on the other side of the mountain where the living was so much cheaper. It can be squeezed only so much. Sitting in his mansion in 2008, he already counted more than 100,000 acres of orchards across five counties. Now they have to keep that up, right? He purchased his first 640-acre section in the late 1970s and kept adding more sections of almonds, pistachios, pomegranates, and citrus until he stretched the lines of agriculture like no Californian before him.
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