Lynda is also mapping out a farm-to-food program where students will grow fruits, vegetables, and grains on a plot of village land. In an era of climate change, everybody is scrambling. A giant pistachio nut flashes on the big screen. He told his neighbors to alter the flight of the bees or hed sue them for trespassing. Theres a lot to commend here, I tell Anzaldo, but where does persuasion end and coercion begin?, As a second-generation Mexican American, Anzaldo says he knows the powerful clench of fast food and sugar among his own family. Making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process?. It cracks open and out pops the head shot of Stewart Resnick in a pistachio green tie. Along a fan of the Kings River, a raisin farmer in Selma shows me his well thats coughing up sand. Boswell had tried to tear apart a copy of The King of California when his secretary asked if he might autograph it. This water basically came from a land owned by someone whos also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. She tells me her not-so-silent partner is Lady Lynda, who was so bothered that Lost Hills didnt have a sit-down restaurant of its own that she sought out Angelica. Now shes getting lots of credit.. Already mechanization is changing, you know, the labor situation. Resnick, he says. One more bin, a post reads. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. In the years of plentiful rains and heavy snowmelt, the bank fills up with more than 1 million acre-feet of stored water. Real Time Billionaires - Forbes According to alawsuit, one animal bolted through an electric fence onto a highway, where it was killed by a truck. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. He commands his realm, and she commands hers, and he takes care to mind the line. The sober man died. I think were going to see more of these fights break out over water among competing users, said Richard Frank, professor of environmental practice at the UC Davis School of Law. Its artificiality had achieved a permanence; its permanence had created my California. Hes a decent guy making $216,000 a year who doesnt pretend that he isnt beholden to Wonderful. 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 walk up and reintroduce myself. Theres a lot happening in the world. When I started to realize the socioeconomic issues of the Central Valley, I decided to stop writing checks to other charities and bring my business acumen into the project. We want good groundwater, too., You mean no more pipelines carrying water in the dead of night?, The pipeline. He stammers a bit. Feudal. We tell the children about the fields when they are young so they dont know the fields when they are old, she says. More than a dozen family members have followed Lupe and Manuel to Lost Hills. 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. Theres Cheat Death for their antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice and Get Crackin for their pistachios and Untouched by Man for their Fiji water. Theyve always been able to bully anyone, he said. The junk scattered about could be a lot worse. 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. The stock is up 33% in the last year and more . Vidovich, who has declined to sign paperwork ensuring his pipeline wont cause harm, filed a lawsuit alleging trespass. Boswell II started the Boswell company. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. A plume of dust joins up with other plumes of dust until the sky over the valley turns sickly. She seems a little nervous waiting in the wings. He was in the mood to gamble. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. I feel too good to give any of it up.. "Stakes are higher than ever," Myers told CNBC. Forbes Billionaires 2023: The Richest People In The World 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. His daughter, who used to own a restaurant, is busy raising her one son. In his book, The Dreamt Land, Fresno-based reporter and author Mark Arax noted that Vidovichs business moves were driven out of an almost singular commodity: water. All I know is I dont want to split it up or sell it in some leveraged buyout. He did this first in the name of wheat and then beef, milk, raisins, cotton, and nuts. It should be right here, but I dont see it. His father had lost it in a bet. The wide-open middle of California did its lullaby on me again. Because the more you invested in your employees and their communities, the more productive they became. Judge Orders Boswell, Vidovich Back to Their Corners in Ditch Bank He says his bosses have been instructing him to cut the water each irrigation. As he walks away, I notice his $400 sneakers. As a function leader, he . I didnt see our creation, much less the figures bent under the canopies of vine that our creation counted on. Lupe and Manuel, like many of the residents, grew up next to each other in a pueblo called San Antonio deep in the state of Guerrero, a mountainous region of dramatic beauty. He needs nearly 1,000 acre-feet a day for 165 daysthe length of nut-growing seasonto hang a good crop across his acres in western Kern. Valuable research and technology reports. Boswell territory. For a long time, she got no credit. Then hed lose his temper and get the strap out.. Theyre our future, she says. The softballs will go to market as whole fruit or as seed pods in a package. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. The deed had been done in a series of hidden meetings in Monterey. Stewart refers to the occasional trek between Lost Hills and Beverly Hillsroughly 140 milesas a carpetbaggers distance. It seems even longer, he says, if you add in the psychological distance of being an East Coast Jew in a California farm belt where Jews are few and far between. She is twinkling from earlobe and finger. Now, it seems, high-profile developer John Vidovich has assumed the role of financier. I take out my cellphone and swipe across Google Maps. The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom wont last forever. Stewart tries to interrupt, but hes not the boss in this room. The Ninth Annual Wonderful Pistachio Conference at the Visalia Convention Center is an invitation-only affair, but I managed to sneak in and grab a seat. But I had some good people helping me.. No farmer ever is. Hes planting ground that no one has ever planted before. Since. Inside, a Wonderful media specialist sees that Resnick needs to be rescued. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. Im 80 years old. It can be squeezed only so much. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. Hes got another meeting to attend. This is a company that runs its resources to the max, he tells me. Mostly, though, they cant wait for the avalanche of nuts to end. Its been more than a year since he gave me the cold shoulder at the pistachio conference. We were asleep at the wheel. This means he can avoid the thievery of a labor contractor who acts as a middleman between the farmer and the farmworker and charges for rides and drinks and doesnt always pay minimum wage. What he knows is that Wonderful is buying up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year in a series of hidden deals. More often than not, it is hauling away some piece of the valleys bounty. Even the community water tank is painted baby blue with a big sunflower. At Wonderful Health and Wellness, were educating our employees about this health crisis. The Resnicks are growing again. Arax: This place called Lost Hills, it is kind of a modern-day company town not unlike Hershey, Pennsylvania. 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. He can mix this private water with his leftover state water and ship it to at least one stranded neighbor who will pay the price. Because he hadnt done it with Daddys money or what he considered a superior brain, he attributed his wealth to luck and to a simple lesson he had learned early in life. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. On this same stretch of 99, I once wrote a story about farmworkers who moonlighted as meth cookers to make ends meet. I sort of remember growing up on a farm, he said. Among the graduating class are kids headed to Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth, and the state and community college systems. Welcome to San Antonio del Norte, he says. Im here to show the farmer that ags footprint needs to get smaller.. None of the sales taxes go to City Hall because Lost Hills isnt a city. Lynda has a son who works as a musician and a son who suffered a birth trauma and lives in a care facility. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. He certainly looks the part in his well-worn jeans and checkered shirts. Sandridge Partners, L.P. Company Profile - Dun & Bradstreet Hes using it to irrigate his almonds and pistachios in Lost Hills. She wanted me to put our $5 million in an account, draw interest, and we could live happily on the 50 grand a year.. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. This is the closest to hills it comes. He used to work for the Resnicks before Stewart put him in charge of the district. Title. But its just a cover for taking water out.. The big man with the goatee behind the wheel is Bernard Puget, a Basque sheepmans son who oversees these orchards. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. This is how Resnick became a pistachio, almond, and pomegranate grower. Halfway through his solo performance, he interrupted his set to tell us a piggy bank had been set up by the exit to donate money to the hardworking men and women in the fields. When the concert was over, I took my wife and children backstage to meet him. Sandridge Partners plans new beef processing plant | John Lindt Whichever dish they choose, workers are asked not to take a bite until they have considered Lyndas latest concoction: an ounce of apple cider vinegar cut with ginger, mandarin juice, and turmeric served in small plastic cups like the wine of Mass. The POM tanks, Im told, are backed up with a three-year supply. Resnick grabs at a pomegranate that might win a blue ribbon at the fair and tries to twist it free. His father was 3 years old at the time. April 17, 2020. Vidovich has more than one reason to be evasive. More than half our employees are obese or near obese, Anzaldo tells me. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. But she doesnt dictate this or that. Angelica would prefer not to get into the details of their financial arrangement. The farmer moved the rain. 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. He came to California in the 1950s to remake himself. A pump is shooting water out of the canal and into the Rain for Rent pipes. When will it be used? My old well cant compete with his new wells. I stick to the left lane and try to stay ahead of the pack. Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's lifeblood? Or is he
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