Get an email notification whenever someone contributes to the discussion. I retrace the road I came in on and cross old Tulare Lake, which rose by flood and sank by drought. But you take some risks in business. 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. No stranger enters this zone unless its to get rid of a body or dump waste from cooking meth or drown a hot car. But if its the tube that Im looking to follow, I must drive through the almond grove. "There are a lot of good places for it (feedlot). He was in military intelligence and had a top secret clearance that involved gathering data and evaluating products they made, he said. United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955 Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. The district has already paid him $40 million for an easement, or right of way, on that land and signed an agreement with him for how the project would operate. He remade himself into a graduate of the UCLA law school, a cleaner of Los Angeles buildings, a vendor of security alarms, a seller of flowers in a pot, a minter of Elvis plates and Princess Diana dolls, a bottler of Fiji Island water, a farmer of San Joaquin Valley dirt. He launches into a CFOs riff on the pistachio market. They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. As for making a major water grab in the Central Valley, Page said Vidovich has nothing on the Wonderful or JG Boswell companies, both of which have far larger land holdings than Vidovich. 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. This last-ditch water in Lost Hills wont make everything right. His story is the one Ive been carting around in my notebook for the past few decades, sure I was ready to write it after five years or ten years, only to learn of another twist that would lead me down another road. Thats all fine and good, Resnick replied, but what about the $1 million-plus hed spent on lawyers fees? In case the growers are fearing the antitrust cops from the Department of Justice, they neednt. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. Here, a crew has dug a culvert beneath the road and hiked the pipeline under the asphalt that divides one field from another. No rain in five years. 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. He had no intention of farming it, either. Hes oblivious, or so it seems. Because the urban places would pay a hell of a lot of money for it. Under her rethink agriculture program, the kids will be trained in plant science and irrigation technology, marketing and sales. Theyre now building an $80 million charter-school complex in Delano, just down the road from Cesar Chavez High. FAMILY OFFICE MARKETPLACE. Fussing with one input or another, he can produce 3,500 pounds of nuts an acre. The sentimental ones stay away. In contrast, John Vidovich, who helms Sandridge, comes from a Silicon Valley farming-turned-developer family. I then move to the far side of the orchard, where another worker, riding a huge mower, is kicking up an even bigger cloud of dust. But that money enabled me to go into Angiola (a water district in Tulare County) and have other water sources.. Floodwater is considered a nuisance, a menace even. How much bigger can agriculture get. Ive learned that I have to be diversified in my water, Vidovich said. John L Vidovich, 65. Plastic drip-irrigation lines stick out of the ground at wrong angles. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. What? If he knows what hes doing, the shears can make a thousand more pounds an acre.. Business got so brisk that he bought two trucks and hired crews. It got to a point where the only way we could get an approval was to go to the voters, he told the Silicon Valley Business Journal hours after filing the initiative paperwork in April 2016. While he was just starting out, he also enlisted in the Navy and served in the reserves for six or eight years, he cant recall the exact term. If anyone doubted the health benefits of the juice, they spent more than $30 million in research to prove that it fought heart disease and prostate woes. He indicated that a proposal was currently being drafted for the council's Tuesday night approval. I cut across Twisselman Road to the pipeline gliding along the aqueduct like a silver snake. He packed his bags and left his wife and kids. Its gone, I say. The Iranians dont irrigate their trees. We saved the best for last, he says. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. Includes Address (3) Phone (3) Email (1) See Results. In December, Vidovich filed an application with the Kings County Planning Department for a slaughterhouse and a feedlot for up to 12,500 animals. Vidovich used the $73 million in 2010 to buy nearly 75 percent of the land in the Angiola Water District. Surely, no one does this better than Wonderful? The space for a familys secrets is only a few feet. It should be right here, but I dont see it. But he is also a farmer in the Central Valley through the family's other business, Sandridge Partners, and thus a reluctant participant in the national debate currently swirling around the 2008 Farm Bill. Special Report: Small Farmers Struggle as Ag Titans Boswell, Vidovich Posted on August 6, 2018 Bakersfield Californian. In the trailer next door, Lupes cousin Margarita lives with her husband, Selfo, and their three young children. Theres not much left over, he says. So the state couldnt deliver, in one year couldnt deliver any of it. She wanted to tell the story of the pomegranate, he told me with a touch of sarcasm. Look it, Im from Beverly Hills. 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. I steer toward the almonds, past a row of worker housing and a main gate. I know I cant do this forever, he says. No farmer ever is. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. His face is blank. Then it hits me. And its that groundwater part of Semitropics agreement with Vidovich that is raising hackles along with eyebrows. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. 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. I applaud, too. It might be nice if my kids and grandkids could turn to a book someday and read about what weve built., He and Lynda were changing the way food was grown in California and sold to the world. Sandridge Partners plans new beef processing plant | John Lindt It takes a life every six seconds. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. 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. Kings Officials Unhappy About Water Proposal, Local Water Guys Eyeing Kings River Flood Water. In fact, his detractors call him the single greatest threat to Central Valley farming ever to come down the pike. "I want to be as open-minded as I can and get all the facts I can," he insisted. Hes so involved, in fact, he even chairs the monthly meetings for Buena Vista Water Storage District where Sandridge owns thousands of acres. Hurley, who also serves as general manager of Green Valley, said that basin, which is separate from the Tulare Lake basin, is actually in balance. Stewart was the second of their four children, the only boy. Your weekly print newspaper delivered, and more, Weekly Print Edition delivered to your mailbox, When you don't want the printed newspaper. The court settlement allows him to take the water to Dudley Ridge, but it cant go outside Kings County. Want to book a hotel in California? Arax: They lose their livelihood. And then it hits me when I reach the road to Weedpatch, where my grandfathers story in Americaa poet on his hands and knees picking potatoesbegan. The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. 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. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. 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. The uncle died at age 22 fighting in Afghanistan. And in fact these guys were able to squeeze and buy water in the open market, and do a few other things to keep their crops going and they were in the midst of drought. Mostly, though, they cant wait for the avalanche of nuts to end. Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. All I know is I dont want to split it up or sell it in some leveraged buyout. His account appeared in the Earth Island Journal, a small environmental quarterly out of Berkeley. He does enough farming in the area to make it look like hes a farmer. 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. Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until smoking. Or at least this is what I can glean through the car window. Lived In Aliquippa PA, Monaca PA. Related To Michele Vidovich, Amy Vidovich. She tells me the water comes out of the tap yellow and foul smelling, and she doesnt trust it. I didnt know good land from bad land. He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. The truth a mercenary has landed on. The giving goes to college scholarships and tutors. And its even worse for the children in Kings County. Scott: So you set out with this question: how was he defying nature? He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it, Vidovich said. Theyll take home $11 an hour for their labors. One of Angiolas main well fields is actually inside the Pixley Irrigation District boundaries where water managers were concerned by the amount of water leaving their district. Manhattan was 30 minutes in one direction; the Jersey Shore, 30 minutes in the other. In a timespan even shorter than Resnicks, the 61-year-old Vidovich has bought up more than 100,000 acres of farmland scattered across the valley. So its a really extraordinary kind of development thats never happened in agriculture in California before really to raise the living of your workers. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. Page said Vidovich is a tough businessman but thats all. He sold rights to more than 14,000 acre feet a year to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County for a headline-grabbing $73 million.