It cracks open and out pops the head shot of Stewart Resnick in a pistachio green tie. Measuring the reach of the Resnicks, its tempting to lean on the hyperventilated language of the 1930s: Empire. My head keeps hitting the sunroof. Water is what led me to Stewart Resnick in the winter of 2003. Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. The nets of the Chinese during the Gold Rush caught terrapin that was served as turtle soup in the fanciest restaurants of San Francisco. When pressed, though, they acknowledged it could be done. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. Sandridge Partners, L.P. Business Data Theres a lot of people who dont like me, but nobody didnt like my dad.. April 17, 2020. Hes got another meeting to attend. Developer, farmer and water trader John Vidovich plans to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore according to a preliminary application filed with the county. He works year-round for Wonderful. She is determined that their lives will play out differently from the lives of their parents, but she means no disrespect by this. When a copy found its way to The New York Times, Lynda was pursued by federal prosecutors until they concluded she was more dilettante than radical. Hit enter to search or ESC to close. "In talking to the planning department, I found out that the initial step is to notify essential agencies in the area for comments. That shadow drove him to work hard in an effort to be useful to De Anza. I hop out of the car. But why is insulin so expensive in the first place? On one side of the road and the other, for miles in both directions, the dirt belongs to Wonderful. So beginning in the 1940s, Kern farmers went out and grabbed a share of not one distant river but two: the San Joaquin to the north and the Sacramento to the north of that. 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. These are loaded, Resnick says. It can be squeezed only so much. Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. 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. He blames Iran. That company led to another company, and he soon owned half the commercial alarm accounts in Los Angeles. Arax: That is the question that you know Im dealing with in this magazine piece. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. She is here and there, but I have never seen her up close. Four thousand peoplemore than double the number on the highway signlive in town, and three out of every four rely on a payday from Wonderful. 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. They issued a commemorative medal of Tiger Woods winning the 1997 Masters that offended the golfer. To top it off, the greedy SOB (farmers rarely uttered Vidovichs name) intended to keep his 7,000 acres of nut trees in Dudley Ridge. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. I saw horrible things, Margarita says. Right there in the big canal of the Dudley Ridge Water District. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. I do all the calculations from the numbers I am able to gather, and I cannot figure out how these nuts are getting enough water. Bernard, hard to believe, is driving straight toward the aqueduct. The bureau happened to be my house in northwest Fresno. About 25,000 acre feet of groundwater. So much snowmelt comes down the mountain that it nearly takes out Oroville Dam. Still, none of it would have happened without luck., What he and Lynda had done with the wretched pomegranate was another matter. Shell check in every so often to see how business is going. He could collect the rents while he slept. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. He was in the mood to gamble. The compass in my car says Im headed east, but that means almost nothing inside a province of 15 million trees. 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. How can this be? First of all, the myriad laws and rules that govern water wouldnt allow that to happen, they say. He had his hands on 65 percent of the nations crop. Under lights, he prunes, plows, and irrigates the almonds. 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. Thank you for reading! This was Lost Hills, where the people are dependent on the Resnicks from cradle to grave. 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. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. Hes oblivious, or so it seems. I walk to another part of the orchard and watch phase two. Yes, critics agree, but Boswell uses that water to irrigate in the district. Their tongues loll to their knees. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. This is the closest to hills it comes. Kings and Tulare farmers and water managers want to know. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. 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. And so that water was feedingResnick pistachios and almonds and keeping them alive in the worst of the drought. When John Vidovich was appointed as fire marshal in September 2014, he was given the difficult task of cleaning up the city of L.A.'s stubbornly antiquated Fire Prevention Bureau, making it more . 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 cost of loneliness: Social isolation holds back workers and costs employers billions, Businesses and consumers are borrowing more, despite rising interest rates, Why a Guarneri violin is expected to fetch $10 million at auction. They rely only on rain, which concentrates the flavorful oils. All but a handful come from Mexico. Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. 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.. Thirty-five percent of our pre-diabetic population has gone into the healthy range, she tells the team. The Resnick story certainly deserved a book, but did he really want me to be the one to write it? But his egotheres no controlling that., Resnick had heard it all before. Im down, Stewart, he protests. How much bigger can agriculture get. By locking up the land, he said, Vidovich will be able to deny smaller farmers like him and Pace the water they need for their own operations. Vicente Fernndez, the king of Ranchera music, is crooning to no one, but it wont be this way in 30 minutes, Hussein tells me. He doesnt wave me off or give chase. They greet me with smiles and handshakes. I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it, Vidovich said. He paved over the last orchard in the Santa Clara Valley with some apartments and then went looking for another valley where he might build his own empire. I stand over the pipes and give them a hard slap. 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. Plastic drip-irrigation lines stick out of the ground at wrong angles. He came on board full-time in 2011, give or take, he said. It is one more way to extend the brand. 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. It specifically set aside $2.7 billion for water storage projects. Across the field, a heavy machine is stacking whats left of the trees into giant mounds. 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? It should be noted here that Angiolas general manager is Matthew Hurley. Vidovich says his quote was clipped and sewn back together to make it sound bad. Id rather be unknown than known. He had recently read The King of California, and that got him thinking. Nearly $365 million worth of Wonderful almonds will have dropped down from the dry sky. So why hasnt this place gone to tumbleweeds? Yes, theyre still delivering water. (Vidovich said he didnt think Sandridge had hit 100,000 acres, total, yet.). On the shallow bottom, the women fished mussels and clams with their toes. Page had been a longtime board member of the Semitropic Water District and Vidovich wanted that kind of expertise. We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. It cant be farmed like it was, he says. This hasnt convinced the people of Lost Hills, however. 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. 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 citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. Notifications from this discussion will be disabled. On our trips to Disneyland, I must have blinkered my eyes heading down 99. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. If he were on the scene today, hed have to add sashed Queens to the list. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. "I don't want to make any. The oldest of five children, he came from Mexico when he was 18. They married in 1972, and he sold the alarm company for $100 million. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Well still make money.. Then one day, he was trying to find a marketing person and got a call from Lynda Sinay, who worked in advertising. Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. Besides, Pace and others say, overreaching is another Vidovich hallmark. I didnt know good land from bad land. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. But you take some risks in business. This is a magnitude of intervention that no other agricultural company in California has ever attempted. To do that, the state requires each area to form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to account for whats going in and coming out of the aquifer. He got into UCLA and joined a Jewish fraternity. It isnt going down because he wont let it go down. They knew little about the company except it was selling its keepsakes for five times the amount Teleflora was. State water dwindling year after year. It was Lynda who came up with the idea of flowers-in-a-gift. Roses are short-lived, she reasoned, but the teapot or watering can that the flowers arrive in is a keepsake. If you have any trouble accessing your account or linking your subscription, our. But nobody didnt like my dad.. He points to the young almond trees that envelop his 20 acres like a siege. The big man with the goatee behind the wheel is Bernard Puget, a Basque sheepmans son who oversees these orchards. On Sleepy Farm Road outside Paso Robles, the Resnicks were looking to add 380 acres of wine grapes and build a small reservoir with groundwater. Or is he just the newest water baron on the block? On the way out of the market, Pablo buys a case of Pacifico. For half my life, I never stopped to wonder: How much was magic? It was linear, logical, fluid, and quite nearly destined. By harvests end, the Resnicks will have put their clamps on 4.4 million almond trees. He said he bought his first parcel here in 1994 when he invested in a foreclosed property in Kings County. What is the phone number of Vidovich John - De Anza Properties? 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. Theres not much left over, he says. Back then, the Los Angeles Times had a bureau in the middle of California. Rain for Rent, the pipes say. The parents of Vidovi and Mohat were featured in a documentary film titled Mentor, which premiered on December 9, 2014. Those figures dont include recent land purchases hes made in the Kern Delta Water District and Fresno Irrigation District both areas Sandridge is targeting for even more land purchases because of its solid rights to the Kern and San Joaquin rivers. Manhattan was 30 minutes in one direction; the Jersey Shore, 30 minutes in the other. The latest water fight between two of the San Joaquin Valley's largest growers will continue with heavy equipment intended to block a pipeline project allowed to remain on the banks of the Tulare Lake Canal in Kings County.
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