Shell check in every so often to see how business is going. To change the microbial life in our digestive tracts and reduce inflammation that leads to disease, we have to reintroduce fermented foods into our diet. Do you know what I am? The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. I find a former partner of Resnick. Even for someone with Vidovichs savvy, the depth of this summers drought could be devastating. Vidovich, meanwhile, is accusing Boswell-backed groundwater agencies of dragging their feet on pumping reductions to the point their actions could sink the small, rural town of Corcoran up to another 11 feet. I know I cant do this forever, he says. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. And so I began with slaughter and madness and then moved on to bartenders for fathers. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. He replenished it by shipping water from his property in Tulare County, 25 miles away, infuriating locals there. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. John Vidovich. He was dressed in the latest slim-fit style. She tells me the water comes out of the tap yellow and foul smelling, and she doesnt trust it. As he walks away, I notice his $400 sneakers. Ill have to go deeper if I can.. One man drives and shakes the tree while the other man makes sure the clusters fall into the butterfly opening of the receiver. I stick to the left lane and try to stay ahead of the pack. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I reached a moment in my life where I had to give back in a meaningful way, she tells the camera. Well, maybe just a little guilt, but thats Jewish. He said the prod for all their giving in Lost Hills happened in Aspen, of all places. And its even worse for the children in Kings County. Like many billionaires, he didnt have a decent explanation for his fortune. Theyre now building an $80 million charter-school complex in Delano, just down the road from Cesar Chavez High. What he knows is that Wonderful is buying up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year in a series of hidden deals. For half my life, I never stopped to wonder: How much was magic? When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you he's a farmer. This water basically came from a land owned by someone whos also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. Four tribes of Yokut lived along its shores. Union pressured Mayor Garcetti's office to oust top fire official A major set of wells for Angiola sits within the Pixley Irrigation District, where the Vidovich-controlled district began improving old wells, installing new ones, and building a pipeline. When youre making the kind of money were making, whats the upside? Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. I get out of the car and walk down an embankment. Three dogs, part pit bull, the menacing part, have given up on the shade and lie on the open road. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. This doesnt count the 21,000 acres of grapefruits and limes hes growing in Texas and Mexico. They all just started running, and kept running, and blew right through the hot wire fence, recalled dairyman Wilson, who estimates $80,000 in fence damage. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. Newsom's proposed fast tracking of the Sites Reservoir is a long overdue . The sale got under the skin of valley farmers. Former billionaire to auction world's biggest rhino farm after spending A year into his studies, an uncle called from California. Theres an unease about the room. My life is about California. Due to the drought, this water would be impossible to replace, it said. For farmers who rely on water from the Kings River, the answer winds up as some shade of yes.. He wonders what agriculture will look like in western Kern in ten years. Its California., Sure. His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. The curriculum is being created by Noemi Donoso, the chief of education for the Chicago public schools before Lynda recruited her to Wonderful. 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. Each time I called, his secretary hung up the phone. How will courts rebuke of Berkeleys natural-gas ban affect the national movement it began? The project would take five days to completewhen the canal wasnt in use. Im a billionaire. Hes got an awful temper hes trying to control through Kabbalah. During the holiday season, they sent out 4,000 gift boxes to their nearest and dearest friends filled with their fruits and nuts, along with a card of the two of them dressed in skin-colored body stockings, posing as Adam and Eve. California water war: San Joaquin Valley landowners battle over scarce Boswell territory. More recently, he earned $40 million in an easement deal with a water bank and exchange that seeks to siphon flood water out of a Kings County canal for storage in Kern County. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. The Resnick story certainly deserved a book, but did he really want me to be the one to write it? A parched Southern California suburb looking to keep up with a booming population. Within the confines of the settlement with Pixley Irrigation District, he continued to move water out of Angiola and into Dudley Ridge. The Boswell company, their attorneys and Tulare Lake Canal Company president Mark Unruh did not respond to repeated requests for comment. I stand over the pipes and give them a hard slap. A piece of pipeline south of Stratford rests in the arm of a piece of heavy equipment on Dec. 16, 2021. So the way Pablo uses own isnt necessarily a pejorative. In the summer of 2010, hed spent several days documenting the deplorable conditions of the modern company town. Ninety-nine is the deadliest highway in America. Its John Vidovich. Wheres it coming from? He lingers in the crowd long enough to shake hands with a friend from Bel-Air whos planting thousands of acres of pistachios in the worst ground of Tulare Lake. Then one day, he was trying to find a marketing person and got a call from Lynda Sinay, who worked in advertising. This is Lynda.. If that happens, theyll go down the highway, and hell lose the $1 he takes for every $100 worth of their checks. As a consequence, the farmland here, nearly 100,000 acres planted in permanent crops, is completely reliant on the governments supply of mountain water. Shoving aside the coins, they introduced a Scarlett OHara doll that, by itself, raked in $35 million in sales. 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. I waited five years before placing another call to his headquarters. Legal bills for this and other Boswell-related disputes are costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. Ive gone too far. April 17, 2020. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. 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. John, his oldest son, had served in the military as an intelligence officer and graduated from Santa Clara law school. Since it is also true that Lost Hills has belonged to the Resnicks for 30 years, one of us might have blurted out, What took you so long to find it? As the film runs to credits, I can see that one credit is missing. His father, Stephen Vidovich, founded DeAnza Properties in 1966 and led the charge to convert the Santa Clara Valley from farmland and pave the way for Silicon Valley to become the hub of late-20th century and early-21st century American innovation. His father had lost it in a bet. Ultimately,youre going to dry up that aquifer under the earth, and thats whats happening now. The big man with the goatee behind the wheel is Bernard Puget, a Basque sheepmans son who oversees these orchards. He and his forebears from Georgia had dried up Tulare Lake, the biggest body of freshwater this side of the Mississippi, and planted 100,000 acres of cotton outside the town of Corcoran. From Dudley Ridge, pipelines belonging to the farming empire of The Wonderful Company (owned by Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick) the move the once-Angiola . Hes never put a dusty boot on the neck of a shovel and dug down into the soil. How much was plunder? He guides me back into the main store with its displays of fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, cold cuts, and baked goods. Growers a tenth the size of Resnick flee the dust in their Ferraris to their second houses in Carmel. The bureau happened to be my house in northwest Fresno. I cross the Tulare County line heading south into Bakersfield, and there in front of me, for no eye to miss, stands the Wonderful Citrus complex with its four-story storage building designed in the shape of an almighty box of Halo mandarins. Eat a corn tortilla instead, she urges. Los Angeles Fire Marshal John Vidovich was at the peak of his career in 2015. Tell me, he asked, though it wasnt entirely a question. The graders, sorters, and beeping forklift drivers head to an immaculate caf, where the Wonderful Saladroasted chicken, mixed greens, cilantro, pistachios, and slices of mandarin in a blue cheese vinaigrettesells for $3. Order finds itself through action. This was how a billionaire who needed more water did politics. Because, while he does farm thousands of acres of pistachios, almonds [] It takes a lot of work to get ahead. She and Manuel were able to buy their trailer several years ago. Veronica Martinez is the news librarian for the Bay Area News Group. The brick-hard ground cant be bought. Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. He has plenty of well water in the northern part of Kings County, outside J.G. Its loaded, Bernard says. Register now for a free, virtual event about the latest season of "The Uncertain Hour". 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. She is the brander of the empire, the final word on their Super Bowl ads, the creator of product marketing. In his best Borscht Belt nasal, he takes a jab. Thanks to Wonderfuls $15 million Get Crackin campaignthe largest media buy in the history of snack nutspistachios now rank among the top ten bestselling salty snack items in the U.S. We are no longer processing nuts, he says. 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. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. 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? Thats 281 square miles. That company led to another company, and he soon owned half the commercial alarm accounts in Los Angeles. China, for one, prefers the Iranian pistachio. The next year, it delivers 300,000 acre-feet. Sure enough, cozied up next to the bank of the aqueduct, I see a glint. The Mojave Water Agency, a San Bernardino-based water provider. His partner in the mandarins once told me that when Stewart is done with you, hes done with you. At the east end, where the highway meets Interstate 5, the traveler gets a choice. He wouldnt know one of his Valencia orange groves from one of his Washington navel orange groves. He was short, bull-like, and didnt take crap from anyone. Theyll take home $11 an hour for their labors. So much snowmelt comes down the mountain that it nearly takes out Oroville Dam. Yes, theyre still delivering water. The three of them spent two weeks of all-nighters making copies. Boswells response has a tough Spaghetti Western quality. The farmer isnt here to smell the cracking open of wood, the ripping open of warm secret earth. He came to California in the 1950s to remake himself. At Wonderful Health and Wellness, were educating our employees about this health crisis. Billionaires Line Up Behind Biden for 2024: 'Stakes Are - Breitbart This is a park for the people, to give them a break from their hard lives. The room smells of Vicks VapoRub. Theyre all chasing Bobby, whose 325-pound bench press, 335-pound squat, and 455-pound dead lift make him the sole member of the 1,000-Pound Club. She deftly places her body between him and me. How will money and power reshape this desiccated landscape? I get it. The wealth-tracking platform provides ongoing updates on the net worth and ranking of each . Asia Pacific +65 6212 1000. 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. The man and his pincers cant be bothered. How can this be? Sitting in his mansion in 2008, he already counted more than 100,000 acres of orchards across five counties. To get there, the pipeline has to cross under a Boswell-controlled canal. Theyre droughts best buddies.. And neither was 1952, Tri-Valley bids farewell to water restrictions as end of drought emergency declared. One more bin, a post reads. How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. LOIS HENRY: Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's Locals recount how he bought a 360-acre parcel in Los Altos Hills for $5.5 million and, only four years later, turned around and sold part of it to the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District for $9.3 million. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. The junk scattered about could be a lot worse. One of his frat brothers was a wealthy kid whose father ran a janitorial business. Why not send him an email? the secretary suggested. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. Here and there my boots crunch down on the dried remains of pomegranates that look like small pieces of scat dropped by a coyote. Because the road ends here, there is no physical way to follow the canals flow. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. When I tell her my name, she whispers into his ear. Theyre our future, she says. Instead of trying to sell the fruit as a piece of fruit, they squeezed its seeds into POMWonderful. As you know, our philosophy at Wonderful is doing well by doing good. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. Even if they had wheels, they wouldnt be going anywhere. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. Theyre dusty with San Joaquin dirt. Its going to be what its going to be. White rhinos for sale, one careful owner: tycoon looks for a Days Inn or Motel 6. Contact 3? More often than not, it is hauling away some piece of the valleys bounty. America still leads the world, with 735 billionaires worth a collective $4.7 trillion, including Elon Musk, who tops the World's Billionaires list for the first time. Along a fan of the Kings River, a raisin farmer in Selma shows me his well thats coughing up sand. Even so, Resnick says, he learned a lesson from the 2004 recall of 13 million pounds of the companys salmonella-tainted almonds: Dont fight the FDA. Hes oblivious, or so it seems. Shes designing the curriculum.. This is a big crop, the field man tells me. 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. After three years of drought, tensions are running high all over rural California. "Once you have them, you spend a lifetime defending them." The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. He works year-round for Wonderful. In a profile written by Lois Henry, then of The Bakersfield Californian now writing exclusively for her own service SJVWater, Vidovich readily acknowledge the acrimony the sale caused. John Vidovich walks through his almond orchard near Wasco and explains the spray irrigation system he uses. What happens to Wonderful? As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. He doesnt wave me off or give chase. Already, they are paying $69 a month to the local utility district. Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood concerns persist across California. She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. John Vidovich, Student Loan Corp: Profile and Biography The front gates of the 25,000-square-foot Beaux Arts mansion on Sunset Boulevard magically opened without a guard giving a nod. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. To the growers, it must feel like a jab in the stomach. So he started laying pipes last December. It is one more way to extend the brand. He started cleaning pizza parlors and drugstores. 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. Then he motions to Lynda, whos standing off to the side of the light-dimmed stage. And how will the Resnicks fare? She wanted to tell the story of the pomegranate, he told me with a touch of sarcasm. The bowls on her kitchen table are filled with grapes, berries, bananas, and red and green bell peppers. John Vidovich is 67 years old and was born on 11/23/1955. I walk into the supermarket El Toro Loco, and the clerk directs me to the back office, where a tobacco-chewing Yemeni named Anthony Hussein is sitting beneath a photograph of an uncle in his U.S. Army uniform. Recommended for you Videos 4:28. The clash of the agricultural titans, who hold influential positions on local water boards and control thousands of acres with precious water rights, is being waged against a backdrop of deep distrust in the community about both companies hidden agendas. His father bought a neighborhood bar and ran it with the same iron fist with which he ran the house. Id rather be unknown than known. He had recently read The King of California, and that got him thinking. One million acres of the valley floor, greater than the size of Rhode Island, are now covered in almond trees. Under her rethink agriculture program, the kids will be trained in plant science and irrigation technology, marketing and sales. I write an email to the Wonderful PR team. Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. The workers didnt react well. One of the first things he did with his monopoly was kill the California Pistachio Commission, the industrys marketing group, by yanking his funding. With that insight, he sold the company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. Yes. Bernard, whats happened? He hired Bert Steir, a Bostonian with a Bronze Star from the Second World War and a degree from Harvard, to come west and work his deals. Building an agricultural empire in a land of drought - Marketplace This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. In this fragile and failing oasis, small farmers worry that both will sell precious water to the highest bidders, then ship it far away. 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. Each square-mile section is divided into blocks, and each block counts a precise number of rows. "Water rights are like democracy," he told Forbes in 1989. She didnt understand his drive. When its Pablos turn, he hands Hussein a check for $437, and Hussein counts out $433 back to him in cash. U.S. immigration has little say-so here. Its gambling. 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 sellers include farmers in the Tulare Lake basin who are pumping so much water out of the ground that the levees protecting the town of Corcoran are sinking, not by inches but by feet. I cut across Twisselman Road to the pipeline gliding along the aqueduct like a silver snake. It takes a life every six seconds. I ask him how the drought has affected Wonderful. Lynda built sidewalks and storm drains, the new park and community center, and repaved the roads. No stranger enters this zone unless its to get rid of a body or dump waste from cooking meth or drown a hot car. You can reach Alex at alex.tavlian@sjvsun.com. A tree crop, with the investment of years and irrigation equipment, can be worth $40,000 to $50,000 an acre; in contrast, row crops are about $10,000 an acre. My health, knock on wood, is good. The aqueduct brings the water, yes? At age 81, hes gotten so big, he doesnt know how big. Let the smaller grower walk among his trees and farm by the row. Then it hits me. Like other small farmers, my water stays on my ground. The FDA sent a warning letter, and Wonderful pledged to study the chlorine levels in the bathing tanks. Join Facebook to connect with John Vidovich and others you may know. And you know why? 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 boss showed him a storeroom filled with chemicals tossed here and there and told him to bring order to the mess. The tule fog sets down again in the valley. As water users fight over a decreasing amount of water, he said, its just inevitable.. Today is quincena day, twice-a-month payday, and he needs me to scram because the workers coming in to cash their checks and wire 25 percent back across the border to families in Guanajuato and Guerrero will wonder if Im with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 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. . Photo courtesy of Trent Davis Bailey/The California Sunday Magazine. Domestic sales are up 42 percent over the past eight years, but foreign sales have stalled. He was headed to the fields at the same time that another farmworker, drunk on beer, was coming home from the fields. Hes getting ready to introduce Lynda, the main speaker, but first he wants to address the federal governments recent recall of Wonderful pistachios. But Paramount isnt Paramount anymore. Now shes getting lots of credit.. And its an area that doesnt have ground water, so its there completely because of the State Water Project. It cracks open and out pops the head shot of Stewart Resnick in a pistachio green tie. Nothing changes. Surely, no one does this better than Wonderful? Thousands of California oaks were felled. If he were on the scene today, hed have to add sashed Queens to the list. The pipeline will pose a constant and continued threat to the easements function, compromising the structural integrity of the easement through saturation and subsidence or by negligent maintenance, wrote attorney Leonard Herr. Of the 22,000 acres they ripped during the drought, 18,000 acres are being replanted in pistachios. I feel his gaze going past me, his voice turning oddly sentimental. Lupe excuses herself to prepare dinner. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. Once his parents decided to go, he decided to go, too. We want good groundwater, too., You mean no more pipelines carrying water in the dead of night?, The pipeline. He stammers a bit. Unlike many other billionaires, they could poke fun at themselves. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep.

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