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. 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. His second son is a psychiatrist. 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. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. He needs nearly 1,000 acre-feet a day for 165 daysthe length of nut-growing seasonto hang a good crop across his acres in western Kern. More pumping, locals say, worsens the regions destructive land subsidence. On a chilly morning in January, the day the pipe was to cross under the canal, Boswells crew arrived to block construction with trucks, trailers, excavators, a motor grader and a bulldozer with the diamond B logo, according to the lawsuit. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. He doesnt know what pipeline means. Boswell Company, which pioneered industrial-scale agriculture to become the largest farming operation in California. They resent howhe sold $73 million worth of water rights to Mojave Water Agency in Southern California. My old well cant compete with his new wells. Fussing with one input or another, he can produce 3,500 pounds of nuts an acre. So now theyre doing everything they can to frustrate my ability to utilize the property, said Vidovich. During paid breaks, they do their 15 minutes of Zumba, take a walk along a designated path, and munch on the free fruits and veggies put out for them. What happens to Wonderful? For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. Once his parents decided to go, he decided to go, too. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. Today, the highest bidder may grow crops in the region. Real Time Billionaires - Forbes He guides me to the caf, and we grab our lunches from the buffet. What? Within the confines of the settlement with Pixley Irrigation District, he continued to move water out of Angiola and into Dudley Ridge. While Vidovich owns the surrounding land, Boswells Tulare Lake Canal Company traverses it with a longstanding legal easement established back in 1906, in spidery cursive print, by the long-dead owner of a long-gone ranch. Theyre no longer in danger. Fallowing the farm until the footprint gets smaller and smaller. Hes getting ready to introduce Lynda, the main speaker, but first he wants to address the federal governments recent recall of Wonderful pistachios. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. So were seeing a shift now and then to have nature imposing its will on the situation. Now its the seven-week nut harvest that brings out the inhalers. Boswells response has a tough Spaghetti Western quality. In Kern County, one in two adults and almost one in five children are obese. 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. The white flowers have set into buds, and the buds have become baby almonds covered in fuzz. A minute later, I reconnect with the pipeline and pursue its length for a football field. Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires rankings tracks the daily ups and downs of the world's richest people. Look, I have no guilt. John Vidovich - Biography Yet the Resnick pipeline is doing just that. No announcement was made; locals noticed excavation, first reported by Lois Henry of SJV Water, a nonprofit news site that covers water issues in San Joaquin Valley. This was the same road that took me to Selma, the raisin capital of the world, to pack peaches and plums for Mel Girazian, my fathers old friend. Down the great aqueduct, by freight of politics and gravity, came the excess waters of the Sacramento River. And now Vidovich is the aggressor, said Doug Verboon, a Kings County supervisor and walnut farmer who works the same 187 acres that his grandfather bought in 1906. The south valleyits people and poverty, its obesity and diabetesis her newest mission. Im in a dire situation.. Typically, each pound sells wholesale for $4.25. Boswell had tried to tear apart a copy of The King of California when his secretary asked if he might autograph it. Im down, Stewart, he protests. If I want to know more, I need to talk to Lupes brother, Gustavo, who has worked as an irrigator at Wonderful for five years and knows what the company is planning for the future. State water dwindling year after year. On the whiteboard in front of the weights, the big boys list their totals. One of his frat brothers was a wealthy kid whose father ran a janitorial business. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. He had spent the morning on his exercise bike reading Fortune. One out of eight has diabetes. Its bringing water from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. Talk to me, Hussein says, draining a can of Rockstar. It wouldnt even make a couple of sections of his almonds. He explains that Wonderful has grown too big to hassle such precision. As a consequence, the farmland here, nearly 100,000 acres planted in permanent crops, is completely reliant on the governments supply of mountain water. Mathews: Should climate projects benefit communities they impact? But I had some good people helping me.. Its California., Sure. I didnt know good land from bad land. The price for pistachios has climbed from $4.50 a pound to an unbelievable $5.25 a pound. I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. In the summer of 2009, he and Lynda attended a dinner lecture by Harvard political philosophy professor Michael Sandel about the moral obligations of wealth. Even if it leaked, it would simply add water to the canal, Vidovich insists. Main Street is Highway 46, which slices through the middle of town. He is a single man who rents a bedroom from other family members for $150 a month. I know I cant do this forever, he says. Five years ago, they decided to get rid of the nacho chips, french fries, and soft drinks. 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. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. This was Lost Hills before Lynda got involved. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. So do the Israelis, who go to the trouble of repackaging the nuts so it doesnt appear that theyre consuming the product of an enemy. Theres Cheat Death for their antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice and Get Crackin for their pistachios and Untouched by Man for their Fiji water. Since the middle of the drought, the price of almonds has dropped almost by half. Im 80 years old. John Vidovich, Student Loan Corp: Profile and Biography What spikes blood sugar more than a can of Coke? On a Facebook page with postings in Spanish, they offer a glimpse of life inside pistachio world. They give thanks for a job that provides decent wages and access to a free wellness center next door staffed by a full-time doctor, physicians assistant, registered dietitian, and marriage and family therapist. The way the Bobcat goes full steam, it takes but a few seconds of splendid violence to uproot a tree. Fifty-three percent of our employees are obese, and 12 percent of them have diabetes., The growers start to fidget. One cousin arrived only last week. It exists as one thing they can almost rationalize out in the fields. Selfo works 50 hours a week as an irrigator. So its a really extraordinary kind of development thats never happened in agriculture in California before really to raise the living of your workers. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. So far, Lynda has shown only patience. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. The vibration here isnt quite as vehement. A restaurant built by Wonderful for the purpose of making the company town look better from the roadside may enjoy a more forgiving bottom line than, say, the Subway up the road. When he first planted seedless mandarins in the valley 17 years ago, the bees from the citrus orchards around him were flying into his groves, pollinating his flowers, and putting seeds into the flesh of his fruit. The comments don't come from Boswell and Vidovich themselves, of course, but from the groundwater sustainability agencies each farming . I park the car and walk in the direction of a scattering of buildings slapped together with stucco and corrugated tin. She gestures to the young students in the front row, the ones enrolled in the ag-prep classes, and asks them to stand up and take a bow.