Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's lifeblood? Or is he But he wasnt looking for the monotony of steady. Comprehensive company profiles. "Water rights are like democracy," he told Forbes in 1989. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. In an era of climate change, everybody is scrambling. Now the land is dry and saline, drained to support a vast and rigid geometry of nut, fruit and dairy farms. He was about my size, but he was very tough. John Vidovich is 67 years old and was born on 11/23/1955. Its gone, I say. This is Twisselman. So so sleepy, says another. It takes a life every six seconds. California water war: San Joaquin Valley landowners battle over scarce Shes now providing tutors and counselors in every region of California to boost the graduation rate. John Vidovich, Student Loan Corp: Profile and Biography Every river busting out of the Sierra was bent sideways, if not backward, by a bulwark of ditches, levees, canals, and dams. These are trees and vines raised in nurseries and put into the ground at a cost of $10,000 an acre to satisfy the worlds growing appetite for nuts and fruits. The region plays an important role in California agriculture but its also ground zero for many of the states most difficult water management problems. This sale made headlines because it was engineered by one farmeran outsider from the cityfor his benefit only. Right there in the big canal of the Dudley Ridge Water District. The sale is still considered a blow to Kings' water portfolio by other farmers. She didnt understand his drive. Lupe knocks on his door, and he invites us in. But a controversial pipeline sits empty, as dry as dust, caught in an angry feud between two of Californias largest land barons, Silicon Valley developer and farmer John Vidovich and Pasadena-based longtime cotton king J.G. What is indisputable is that over the past 20-plus years, Vidovich has quietly amassed more than 100,000 acres in the Central Valley, gaining footholds on numerous water boards, which has given him control over vast amounts of groundwater the valley's lifeblood. Burglar alarms, on the other hand, offered round-the-clock vigilance without coffee breaks. Newsom's proposed fast tracking of the Sites Reservoir is a long overdue . Even for someone with Vidovichs savvy, the depth of this summers drought could be devastating. More pumping, locals say, worsens the regions destructive land subsidence. The boss showed him a storeroom filled with chemicals tossed here and there and told him to bring order to the mess. 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. 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. Past Bakersfield and the high school football stadium where Frank Gifford and Les Richter, two future NFL Hall of Famers, squared off in the Valley Championship in 1947 in the driving rain. In 2009, Vidovich sold the annual rights to 14,000 acrefeet of water belonging to property sitting in the Dudley Ridge Water District, located in Kings County, for an eye-popping $73 million. Has the San Joaquin Valley reached its Chinatown moment? From the east side of Tulare County to the west side of Fresno County, theyre planting more nuts and Halos. The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. Forbes Billionaires 2023: The Richest People In The World She had her own bookabout her genius as a marketergoing. They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. I stand over the pipes and give them a hard slap. Twenty miles outside Fresno, I cross the Kings, the river that irrigates more farmland than any other river here. It wanted assurance that the pipeline wont interfere with the canal, as well as proof that Vidovich has $5 million in insurance if the canal gets damaged. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. Dynamic search and list-building capabilities. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. I did not name the town, Lynda says. My old well cant compete with his new wells. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. So were seeing a shift now and then to have nature imposing its will on the situation. The tule fog sets down again in the valley. I cut across Twisselman Road to the pipeline gliding along the aqueduct like a silver snake. Where the pipes butt up against Twisselman Road, a more clever bit of engineering is required. The bureau happened to be my house in northwest Fresno. The believer and the skeptic do their tussle inside my head. And so that water was feedingResnick pistachios and almonds and keeping them alive in the worst of the drought. Tomorrow? I study the terrain. Special Report: Small Farmers Struggle as Ag Titans Boswell, Vidovich The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. Then the drug cartels took over the countryside and planted poppies. My grandfather, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, traveled 7,000 miles by ship and train in 1920 to find out if his uncles exhortationThe grapes here are the size of jade eggswas true. One year later, Vidovich turned his gain from the water sale to Mojave into an almost outright acquisition of land in the Angiola Water District in Tulare County. The farmer isnt here to smell the cracking open of wood, the ripping open of warm secret earth. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. 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. As you know, our philosophy at Wonderful is doing well by doing good. The deed had been done in a series of hidden meetings in Monterey. Lynda sent the first batches of POM, week after week, as gifts to David Bowie, Rupert Murdoch, and Disney head Michael Eisner. 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. As the growers punch more holes into the ground looking for a vanishing resource, the earth is sinking. This is the domain of Stewart Resnick, the richest farmer in the country and maybe the most peculiar one, too. You may have never heard of John Vidovich, but his impact on the day-to-day life of the average southern San Joaquin Valley farmer is difficult to be understated. Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. Because it is a community of all Hispanics.. One of the most dramatic alterations of the earths surface in human history took place here. In the winter of 2010, Vidovich put up for sale half his draw of state water from the Dudley Ridge Water District. Vidovich did not immediately respond . . The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Water is what led me to Stewart Resnick in the winter of 2003. A fully equipped teaching kitchen will turn the harvest into school lunches. If she has her way, they will go to college, too. Billionaires Line Up Behind Biden for 2024: 'Stakes Are - Breitbart But the players are different. 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. When I look around here at what weve built and then look back at my life in New Jersey, I think, How did it happen? For one man and woman to build something like this would be almost impossible today.. Former L.A. Fire Marshal John Vidovich has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging he was "unlawfully and unceremoniously ousted from his job" in August 2016. LOIS HENRY: Water conspiracy or just poor optics? It wont hurt the canal, he said. Vidovich went on a shopping spree. By the decree of Lynda, who once contemplated a bowl of those juicy little seedless mandarins and on the spot named them Cuties, this is now the land of Wonderful. This is the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. 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. But nobody didnt like my dad.. Two men sit inside separate cabins of a small tractor with pincers on one side and a catcher on the other. He studied the situation. The net return on the pistachio proves that Wonderfuls dominance in the market has benefited every grower in the room. Boswell II started the Boswell company. The shiny red orbs, three months shy of harvest, pop out from the bright green leaves like bulbs on a Christmas tree. Each face wears its own weary. I had not seen any. Pablo prunes and irrigates the almond and pistachio trees and applies the chemicals that cannot be applied by helicopter. One of the first things he did with his monopoly was kill the California Pistachio Commission, the industrys marketing group, by yanking his funding. Falling groundwater levels are stressing their wells. Even the community water tank is painted baby blue with a big sunflower. The continuous rattle feeds the nuts into a series of bins on the backside of the tractor. 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. The bells in the churches pealed, and out came the villagers with their scythes and axes, believing they had found the reason for their poverty. They dont do agribusiness. He replenished it by shipping water from his property in Tulare County, 25 miles away, infuriating locals there. At the plant, we built our gyms, and we have stretching and walking activities. A day later, I get a call from Mr. Resnick. Arax: This place called Lost Hills, it is kind of a modern-day company town not unlike Hershey, Pennsylvania. Maybe not since the wheat barons has the income disparity between farmer and farmworker been greater. I hop out of the car. Instead of trying to sell the fruit as a piece of fruit, they squeezed its seeds into POMWonderful. The wall of Pacifico and 16-ounce cans of Bud is rebuilt daily. Then the autumn of 2016 arrives with the strangeness of clouds. 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. Bernards eyes are fixed straight ahead. After three years of drought, tensions are running high all over rural California. The states massive plumbing system is sending virtually nothing to farmers. Vidovich has a unique perspective on Stewart Resnick and the acres of crops that have made Wonderful a success, as he tells Arax . Lynda assisted her with the design and color scheme but otherwise has remained hands-off. Real-time trigger alerts. This is the closest to hills it comes. The colors turn brilliant in the light made spectacular by the particles of dust. Theres an unease about the room. She is here and there, but I have never seen her up close. 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. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. Thats more than double the crop that Resnick boasted about when I saw him eight years ago. 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. Welcome to San Antonio del Norte, he says. 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. Lets meet again in two weeks, he said. Since international sanctions were lifted five years earlier, Iran has been crowding the market with its more buttery-tasting pistachios. Too many pistachios. He had an industrial machine, hardly used, that scrubbed and waxed floors. The Kings is bone-dry as usual. Research is showing that grapeseed oil is healthier than corn oil and canola oil and may be better for you than olive oil, he tells me. Farmers near Pixley already have sued him once for taking too much water out of their ground and moving it. His account appeared in the Earth Island Journal, a small environmental quarterly out of Berkeley. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. His second son is a psychiatrist. The rain starts to fall, big, fat, slashing drops that feel like electricity on my open palm. Johannesburg He spent his vast fortune on a 30-year quest to save the rhinoceros. The piece, I was told, had left Lynda embarrassed and fuming. Theres no issue with the pipeline..
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