I follow him inside to a long line of workers that ends at a plastic window where Hussein sits on the other side, working the cash register like a teller at a race track. The wall of Pacifico and 16-ounce cans of Bud is rebuilt daily. Veronica Martinez is the news librarian for the Bay Area News Group. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. Ron DeSantis isn't returning his calls . Wanted: an animal-loving billionaire who might consider buying 1,993 threatened white rhinos instead of a new superyacht or a Picasso, or a Picasso onboard a superyacht. Because of a lack of water? I ask. More pumping, locals say, worsens the regions destructive land subsidence. It will carry his private water on his private land, never leaving the regions geological basin. Once you have them, you spend a lifetime defending them.. It is the ditch up the road, the one that carries no water, that is filled with old mattresses and spent appliances. I didnt know good land from bad land. Look, these farmers go back two, three, and four generations. Now theres something here. By the eighth day of harvest, the sun is gone. 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. They were hardly the first rich people to use patronage to try to wheedle a citizenry toward their idea of a better life. Other billionaires getting behind Biden are investor Haim Saban, worth $2.9 billion, DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, worth $1 billion, and Signum Global Advisors founder Charles Myers whose net worth is unknown. He was dressed in the latest slim-fit style. The pipeline, bankrolled by his investment firm Sandridge Partners, is an efficient and conservation-minded way to ship water, he says. You have no idea the people on my VIP list who drink it. Water that has shipped you know hundreds of miles from the north of California where there are these abundant rivers. Since the middle of the drought, the price of almonds has dropped almost by half. Ive never given an interview to a newspaper or magazine before. Wow. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. Its not the fidget of boredom. So why hasnt this place gone to tumbleweeds? The relatives try not to press them, but the arrangement still feels like a form of indentured servitude. Whether its Fresno or Kings or Tulare or Kern counties, hes grabbing land where the groundwater is plenty or a river runs through it or the aqueduct spills its north-to-south flow. It wont hurt the canal, he said. 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. The region plays an important role in California agriculture but its also ground zero for many of the states most difficult water management problems. More than one ballad was about the valley, so he came to Fresno. 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. 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. So were seeing a shift now and then to have nature imposing its will on the situation. It took time to gain the respect of the people, and I was afraid. Burglar alarms, on the other hand, offered round-the-clock vigilance without coffee breaks. My husband would have been shot dead like the others, but he was lucky. Surely, no one does this better than Wonderful? Among other projects, he developed the posh Quarry Hills subdivision in Los Altos Hills with 22 multimillion-dollar luxury homes, where he now lives in a 15,000-square-foot house on 10 acres and a vineyard. Thousands of acres of pistachio trees now await the next flood. 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. Theyre now building an $80 million charter-school complex in Delano, just down the road from Cesar Chavez High. Compulsive gambler and alcoholic. A cross of Jesus hangs from the bedpost. Already, the high school is filled with hundreds of students bused in from farmworker towns that are among the poorest communities in the West. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. You Have Found Lost Hills! More than half our employees are obese or near obese, Anzaldo tells me. Its bringing water from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. 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. He commands his realm, and she commands hers, and he takes care to mind the line. Jim Wilson of J & D Wilson & Sons Dairy says two of his cattle died and $80,000 worth of fencing was damaged after a Boswell Co. helicopter buzzed his farm that he leases from John Vidovich, in . 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. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. Its his pipe, not mine. Two strains of salmonella found in their pistachios had caused a multistate outbreak of illnesses. Either way is a trespass. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. The FDA sent a warning letter, and Wonderful pledged to study the chlorine levels in the bathing tanks. Who knows when a five-year drought is coming? Jun 27, 2007. Do you know what I am? A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. Now shes getting lots of credit.. From the east side of Tulare County to the west side of Fresno County, theyre planting more nuts and Halos. Vidovichs supporters like Wilson say he loves to help people, donating laptops to the struggling Stratford school district and inviting local Native Americans to his property to harvest reeds and teach basket-weaving traditions. How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? The colors turn brilliant in the light made spectacular by the particles of dust. He is a single man who rents a bedroom from other family members for $150 a month. Days Inn or Motel 6. But most of this water has been spent by the Resnicks and other account holders in years two, three, and four of the drought. And then what happens in drought is there is this desperation to keep it going. He called it fake junk, sued, and won. One million acres of the valley floor, greater than the size of Rhode Island, are now covered in almond trees. 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. Vidovich has more than one reason to be evasive. 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. Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood concerns persist across California. Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. But I had some good people helping me.. 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. On the south end stands the Wonderful Community Center, where residents are urged to attend thrice-weekly Zumba and core-training sessions, healthy cooking classes, and weekend cultural outings featuring the likes of Americas Premier Latino Dance Company. I was 16, and his packing house was my first job, a baptism into the money, money, money world of the men who grew fruit and the men who sold it. Or he can devise a scheme to steal water from a neighbor up the road. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. I sit in my car and wait in the parking lot. Nearly $365 million worth of Wonderful almonds will have dropped down from the dry sky. 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. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. She was aiming to surround herself with famous actors and artists and public intellectuals. The control Resnick exercises inside his $4.5 billion privately held company does relinquish to one person: his wife, Lynda, vice chairman and co-owner, the Pomegranate Queen, as she calls herself. She is twinkling from earlobe and finger. This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. Its a water-saving method, Vidovich said. As a function leader, he . If youve ever had Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful pomegranate juice or Halo mandarin oranges, youve had produce grown on one of the largest farms in the world. It was his father and uncles who founded the company in 1925. Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. I retrace the road I came in on and cross old Tulare Lake, which rose by flood and sank by drought. Like other small farmers, my water stays on my ground. The land is turning to salt. Past Delano and the first vineyards that Cesar Chavez marched against. Resnick, he says. This is the Lynda who now endeavors to see farmhands as something more than workers. 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. 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. The great drought is officially over. Then hed lose his temper and get the strap out.. John Vidovich is 67 years old and was born on 11/23/1955. He maneuvers down the middle of the row, sweeps up the dried almonds, and throws them into a catcher. The load will translate into 18,000 pounds of finished nuts in a matter of days. Today, at 81, his money is all but gone, and South African conservationist John Hume is throwing in the towel . Youre the one who leads the way on selling agricultural water to the cities. The Wheat King begets the Cattle King, and the Cattle King begets the Cotton King, and the Cotton King begets the Nut King and Pomegranate Queen. Presently, John Vidovich is Vice President & Sales Director at The Student Loan Corp. In the Wonderful fields, he tells me, at least 80 percent of the workers carry no documents or documents that are not real. The Sureos gang has tagged the front entrance but otherwise has left the inside unmarked. He found it. How much was plunder? His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. California showed me why.. Its been more than a year since he gave me the cold shoulder at the pistachio conference. 2023 Minnesota Public Radio. You cant reverse diabetes, but you can control it with a blood sugar level between 6.5 and 8. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. Uneasy about a slowly-marching plan to siphon Valley water for Southern California, farmers and some water managers are worrying about the growing shadow of one of the regions largest land owners. The people here have traveled too far. And Vidovich has said if he . One of the most dramatic alterations of the earths surface in human history took place here. Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. We produced a short documentary film. Wonderful, by contrast, shoots for the middle. The court settlement allows him to take the water to Dudley Ridge, but it cant go outside Kings County. Another intrepid California billionaire named John Vidovich, scion of the Vidovich fortune, has a different path forward for the Golden State, one that he's established in his own land and water grabs. None of this is my idea. No one pushes their product harder. It was this persistence and, above all, good timing that explained his bigness. Look, I delegate a lot of things, obviously. I follow one of the engines of harvest as it rolls into an orchard like a tank. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. Vidovich, whose total compensation was about $236,000 in the last fiscal year, was previously the agency's chief of staff. Just ahead I can see the last section of pipe throwing a cascade of white water into a main canal belonging to the Lost Hills Water District. Theyre droughts best buddies.. 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. In the late 1970s, he went looking for a hedge against inflation. I call the manager of the Lost Hills Water District. But this is water for Mr. Resnick. Recommended for you Videos 4:28. Before he died at age 86, J.G. He kept planting more and more trees. He was tough on the outside. I kept my notes and tapes and waited for another day. They arrive in Chevy trucks and Dodge vans and spill out in groups of four or five under the sweat-stained hats of the 49ers, Penn State, and the Yankees. He unfolds a $20 bill from a wad he keeps inside a bent paper clip, and we take a seat in the far corner. The believer and the skeptic do their tussle inside my head. This is a magnitude of intervention that no other agricultural company in California has ever attempted. The partner kept the Cutie name but only after paying the Resnicks tens of millions of dollars. To manage the disease. Like the wheat barons of the 1870s who lived on San Franciscos Nob Hill, Resnick isnt of this place. At the plant, we built our gyms, and we have stretching and walking activities. I feel too good to give any of it up.. Somehow, 30 or 40 nuts arent compelled to drop. Lynda has a son who works as a musician and a son who suffered a birth trauma and lives in a care facility. Boswell told me what a fool he and his forebears had been for wasting water, sun, and soil in California to raise fiber, of all things. He uses more water than any other person in the West. Hes farming water. 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. As farmworker colonies go, this one isnt as grim as others Ive visited. The project seemed simple: Using existing canals and new 48-inch pipe, he would ship water 10 miles from his property in Lemoore to property south of Stratford. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. In his writing in The Dreamt Land, Arax notes that Vidovich found a creative route around that restriction. April 17, 2020. Digging in was its own wisdom, he discovered. 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. John Catsimatidis, the billionaire CEO of the Gristedes supermarket chain who donated to Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, says that Florida Gov. The oldest of five children, he came from Mexico when he was 18. This is my wife. Lost Hills finally has something to be proud about. The price for pistachios has climbed from $4.50 a pound to an unbelievable $5.25 a pound. I look back at Resnick. Twenty miles outside Fresno, I cross the Kings, the river that irrigates more farmland than any other river here. We cant insist on wellness the way we can insist on plant safety. Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States, a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed Californias landscape, and ruled entire towns. When youre making the kind of money were making, whats the upside? Hundreds of giant praying mantises standing on platforms of concrete are pulling oil from a Chevron field. While water has been moved, bought, sold and traded in California for decades, most deals have typically involved small supplies. He explains that Wonderful has grown too big to hassle such precision. The shiny red orbs, three months shy of harvest, pop out from the bright green leaves like bulbs on a Christmas tree. By then, Wonderful, if it still exists, will be a portfolio run by men even farther away than Beverly Hills. Hes surrounded by a half-dozen of his top men and women, the same ones whove been artfully dodging me for the past three years. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. Annual sales at the Mint jumped to nearly $1 billion. Four tribes of Yokut lived along its shores. Its been more than a year since the grand opening, and theyre still operating in the red. Sugar kills, she tells them. His father was 3 years old at the time. But this outwardly unassuming multimillionaire has become a lightning rod of controversy. A balancing of books in an office in the city has decided that this orchard and others around it, covered by too little water, can go. How can this be? Agriculture in the south valley has extended far beyond the provisions of its one river, the Kern. 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. My old well cant compete with his new wells. Shell check in every so often to see how business is going. They're drought's best buddies." John Vidovich will tell you he's the interloper who came over the other mountain, the Coast Range. And that scares the hell out of everybody who lives here.. The pipeline project is suspended while the two sides battle in court. To carry water from someplace far away to another place far away, he says. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. And then they pump more groundwater. The highway runs two lanes here, three lanes there, through miles of agriculture broken every 20 minutes by fast food, gas station, and cheap motel. But that still doesnt mean that most people in town can afford to eat here. 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. The making of a billionaire over the next half-century was a series of dots that connected in the California sunshine. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. A piece of pipeline south of Stratford rests in the arm of a piece of heavy equipment on Dec. 16, 2021. Where do you begin with a man of great riches if not the distant places you might have in common? Most everything that can be touched in this corner of California belongs to Wonderful. I applaud, too. He spends much of his off hours fixing it up. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. VIDEO: Christmas wonderland featuring the Grinch . There are plans, crazy as it sounds, to take out 10,000 acres of almonds. Its California., Sure. If this were any other part of Kern, the farmers would be reaching into the earth to make up the difference.

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