john vidovich documentary

The abundance of that water in good years has created this overreach of agriculture. John L Vidovich, 65. I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. He became more involved with De Anza, working with his dad, whom he describes as bigger than life.. My husband would have been shot dead like the others, but he was lucky. Residential. His many land purchases and involvement on water boards are all about farming, not selling water to L.A. The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. You sure this isnt 18 tons an acre? he says, goading. John T Vidovich - Family Office Marketplace Yet Vidovich said he is not personally a booster of the farm bill, and that his company might be better off without it. As he walks away, I notice his $400 sneakers. Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. So I ask about the big picture. 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. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. Id have to say that fully half of my success has been luck. From a safe, Ellsberg had lifted the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of how successive presidents lied to the public to cover up the failings of the Vietnam War. Mobil and Texaco and Prudential Life were willing to practically give the ground and trees away. Other water districts contended it was much more. It was true that agriculture had been selling state project water to cities for two decades. Who knows when a five-year drought is coming? John Vidovich serves as the Vice President, Business Development of Discover. Then I get lucky. I grab my notebook and walk up to one of the vans. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. The room smells of Vicks VapoRub. John Vidovich is VP/Executive Director:Sales at Student Loan Corp. See John Vidovich's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Perched up there, a queen might peek out and utter, Let them eat cake, Lynda once said. Lived In Aliquippa PA, Monaca PA. Related To Michele Vidovich, Amy Vidovich. He bought 20,000 acres in the Tulare Lake basinland that not even Boswell dared farm. Page met Vidovich in 2005 when Page was farming 400 acres out near Wasco. "I think what they're doing is, there's a lot of issues with the farm bill, so they're trying to find scapegoats.". Angiola was rehabbing old wells, drilling new ones and installed a large pipeline. He launches into a CFOs riff on the pistachio market. I notice she keeps the water running for a long time. Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. So the way Pablo uses own isnt necessarily a pejorative. Lynda has a son who works as a musician and a son who suffered a birth trauma and lives in a care facility. You can plant only so many acres on ground that has no groundwater. Farm bill strikes local note with developer/farmer, losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase, Los Altos teen wins Food Network top prize, Los Altos teen stars as featured contestant on Food Networks Kids Baking Championship, Snow in the hills: Unusual weather (for Los Altos) brings white winter to area, Running the table: Bullis Charter sixth-grader rules his age group in table tennis, Outside Santa Clara County Annual Subscription, Outside Santa Clara County Monthly Subscription. Feudal. Lets meet again in two weeks, he said. Vidovich has more than one reason to be evasive. A giant pistachio nut flashes on the big screen. 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 math works out to $162 a tree. At this point, he said, he uses about 30 percent of his land for farming and 70 percent for water. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. 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. The south valleyits people and poverty, its obesity and diabetesis her newest mission. Vidovich used the $73 million in 2010 to buy nearly 75 percent of the land in the Angiola Water District. Ive gone too far. I think I paid $9 million. When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you, Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 310,095, Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 305,002, Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated:71, Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated:83.13, Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department. There are often laws binding it to a basin. Every mogul, every movie star. She was the daughter of Jack Harris, a film distributor, who moved the family to Los Angeles when Lynda was 15 to produce movies. She won a gold Effie, advertisings Oscar. matt scharff golf net worth; how did iruka die; does albert die in 911. west potomac high school death; john vidovich documentary; is bayville beach open to the public? Observers worry that Vidovich plans to pump Kings and Tulare counties dry, park that water in Kern County and then sell it to the highest bidder in dry years, leaving a once-thriving farm district barren. I enter an equipment yard where a Wonderful farmhand is standing next to a tractor. You cant be exporting groundwater from one basin to another., Whatever water hes taking, its too little, too late.. Look it, Im from Beverly Hills. John Vidovich from Perth, Australia talks about his experience during the Summer Diaspora Business Trip last year. Not long before, Vidovich was trying to grab water from Resnick, not give it. When I crossed the border and found Lost Hills, there was nothing here, he says. Still, he was starting to think about his legacy, and thats why he finally agreed to meet with me. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. He packed his bags and left his wife and kids. The nets of the Chinese during the Gold Rush caught terrapin that was served as turtle soup in the fanciest restaurants of San Francisco. The rain starts to fall, big, fat, slashing drops that feel like electricity on my open palm. What if he dropped his lawsuit and the two of them worked together to solve their water problems? In case the growers are fearing the antitrust cops from the Department of Justice, they neednt. On a fog-drip night in January 1972, two men walked into my fathers empty bar with gloves on and shot him to death. John, his oldest son, had served in the military as an intelligence officer and graduated from Santa Clara law school. This is a forgotten community. Its an economy of scale on a scale no ones ever tried here. SANDRIDGE PARTNERS | LinkedIn They point to three new pump stations along Angiolas main canal just north of the county line that have the ability to move 100,000 acre feet a year into pipes that head south and west. If she has her way, they will go to college, too. At the time we were handing out college scholarships in the valley, but Lynda decided it wasnt nearly enough. A year and a half after hearing Sandeland in the wake of Giblers storyLynda kicked into high gear their mission to save Lost Hills and several other farmworker towns where Wonderful operated its orchards and processing plants. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. The William Saroyan Theatre was packed that October 1996 night. President George Bush has been outspoken in his criticism of the bill, which he vetoed last week before being overruled by majorities in the House and Senate. Bankers and their fair-weather financing exasperated Resnick. All Rights Reserved. Its not true, he wants to farm.. This is where the pistachios, 400 truckloads a day, 50 days of harvest, come to be weighed, washed, peeled, dried, gassed, sorted, salted, roasted, packaged, and shipped out to the world. Marketplace is a division of MPR's 501 (c)(3). The scale of productionand the ability to process, market, and sell its own cropsallows Wonderful to be mostly mediocre in the fields and remain highly profitable. The image of water moves on and on through miles of western Kern. Kings and Tulare farmers and water managers want to know. This last-ditch water in Lost Hills wont make everything right. He had his hands on 65 percent of the nations crop. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. I didnt see the tumbleweeds along the roadside and the strip of parched earth that separated what remained of the desert from the perfect rows of irrigated agriculture. "In talking to the planning department, I found out that the initial step is to notify essential agencies in the area for comments. 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. Lost Hills finally has something to be proud about. Each mound is fed into an even bigger machine whose teeth pulverize the trees and make sawdust. The punitive damage portion, about $73 million, was overturned on appeal and the case has been sent back to Kings County. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. His partner in the mandarins once told me that when Stewart is done with you, hes done with you. The City of Lemoore is one such agency obligated to respond. Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. "A small farmer, if he gets his whole limit, it keeps him in business, whereas for us, it's a very small fraction of our revenue," Vidovich said. Rethink Your Drink is the latest slogan. We are horrified by the lack of regard for both neighbor and nature, and we hope that the community will accept our deepest and most sincere apologies and find it in their hearts to forgive us. They pledge to donate the 380 acres to charity. 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. Scott: So we should talk about the labor that makes this all possible. Ive never given an interview to a newspaper or magazine before. Before he died at age 86, J.G. But theres no denying his desperation. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. Of course, I know everyone in the world, she told one reporter. And its even worse for the children in Kings County. Id rather be unknown than known. He had recently read The King of California, and that got him thinking. I grew up in the suburbs where our playgrounds were named after the pioneers of fruit and canals of irrigation shot through our neighborhoods to the farms we did not know. The farmer moved the rain. Im actually not supposed to talk about it.. He maneuvers down the middle of the row, sweeps up the dried almonds, and throws them into a catcher. "We have one of the premier colleges in the country, and they want to put a slaughterhouse right next to it? No luck. A pair of those eyebrows belonged to former farmer and three-term Kings County Supervisor Tony Oliveira, who served from 1999 through 2010 and didn't find out about the upcoming project until Jan. 11. I know I cant do this forever, he says. The speech of his parents and grandparents, the Yiddish-inflected New York with its humors and cut-to-the-quick impatiences, had not left his own speech in the half-century since hed come to California. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. For now, theyre selling to farmers like Resnick who can pay the price. Nowhere to turn, I turn back around and roll down my window. As he bled the aquifer dry, he called on the government to bring him an even mightier river from afar. Section, block, and row dont compute; he has to direct me by cellphone and guideposts. High 53F. Too many pomegranates. A skill his detractors say hes used to maneuver water away from its rightful place to his own benefit. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. 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. Boswell farming company pumps there too. Proposition 1 is a $7 billion bond passed in 2014 that would pay for a host of projects from flood control to water quality. He owns the land next to the aqueduct where the reservoir would be built and is the one who brought the floodwater project idea to Semitropic a few years ago. Past Bakersfield and the high school football stadium where Frank Gifford and Les Richter, two future NFL Hall of Famers, squared off in the Valley Championship in 1947 in the driving rain. The sober man died. Each tree produces 22 pounds of nuts. How much bigger can agriculture get. Resnicks billions rely on his ability to master water, sun, soil, and even bees. One mile, two miles, three miles, fourit keeps going until it reaches another county and back to one of the main canals in the Dudley Ridge Water District. He kept planting more and more trees. 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. This amounted to 14,000 acre-feet. Indeed, as president of the board, Vidovich has a great deal of influence in directing much of the water districts business. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. The type of transaction is also recorded such as cash entry, credit entry, homesteads, patents (deeds . In the years of plentiful rains and heavy snowmelt, the bank fills up with more than 1 million acre-feet of stored water. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. Lupe excuses herself to prepare dinner. Subscribers keep our independent community news in business. It was the early spring of 2008, and this time his secretary didnt hang up on me. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. Boswell Company, and Sandridge Partners, controlled by John Vidovich, will be back in court on March 23 when Judge Valerie Chrissakis will decide whether the Sandridge pipeline is subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act If so, it would mean the The knoll begins to rise. His oldest son is retired in Seattle. Six hundred and forty acres dont look like 640 acresa square mileuntil they start ripping out the trees. It comes out to $2,000 a month. John Vidovich is scion of his family's development firm, De Anza Properties, which owns Rancho Shopping Center and is renovating Los Altos Gardens. No. I meet up with the Wonderful field man who first tipped me off to the pipeline. The bunches of chartreuse-tipped nuts hanging from antler branches never touch the ground. We tell the children about the fields when they are young so they dont know the fields when they are old, she says. More than a dozen family members have followed Lupe and Manuel to Lost Hills. Each tree produces 38 pounds of nuts. John Vidovich and the Discover executive team are rated an A- by 65 employees. He used to work for the Resnicks before Stewart put him in charge of the district. In contrast, John Vidovich, who helms Sandridge, comes from a Silicon Valley farming-turned-developer family. Floodwater is considered a nuisance, a menace even. Past Delano and the first vineyards that Cesar Chavez marched against. 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. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. I don't think it would ever be very comfortable if you had an embargo and were denied food.". Though Vidovich describes them as simply having known each other at school, others in Tulare and Kings water circles say Hurley is Vidovichs right-hand man some say henchman. The boss came back in, saw his do-nothing, and said only three words: Just get started. He began to move, and the job went quickly after that. These are trees and vines raised in nurseries and put into the ground at a cost of $10,000 an acre to satisfy the worlds growing appetite for nuts and fruits. I come upon a Wonderful field man in a four-by-four truck who listens to my bewilderment and takes pity. For the bright kids who have no interest in a bachelors degree, she has designed the Wonderful Agriculture Prep Program to serve an additional 1,000 students. And whats the end game of moving that water? We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. Stewart was the second of their four children, the only boy. Its going to be what its going to be. His father had lost it in a bet. Like a lot of empires, it comes to an end., So what about you? I ask. The more water he got, the more crops he planted, and the more crops he planted, the more water he needed to plant more crops, and on and on. Sorry, no promotional deals were found matching that code. Join us for a free, virtual event for International Women's Day on March 8! Wow. One million acres of the valley floor, greater than the size of Rhode Island, are now covered in almond trees. I dont believe we should be sending water to LA, he said. What happens to them if Wonderful downsizes? He got himself into this jam. Resnick has saved the front seat for me. For now, shes playing country western music on the sound system and trying to lure a combination of oil-field workers, supervisors at Wonderful, and travelers driving the last miles of James Dean. Dont let his boots, blue jeans, and ball cap fool you, the old-timers say. The winter goes down as one of the wettest in recorded history. 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. Eli Lilly announced a cap on insulin costs. Lupe and I walk to the far side of the trailer park to find Gustavo. Number three, water from Angiola cant physically get to Semitropics proposed storage cells. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. It should be right here, but I dont see it. Wild salmon and all these sides made from scratch. 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. The junk scattered about could be a lot worse. The Yokut had a saying that when the farmer drained the last drops of snowmelt from Tulare Lake, the water would return. Right there in the big canal of the Dudley Ridge Water District. This is Lynda.. The project would consist of a small reservoir, more like short-term storage cells, along the California Aqueduct just north of Kettleman City where floodwater off the south fork of the Kings River would be captured. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. The choices for the Kern farmer now come down to two: He can reach deep into his pocket and buy high-priced water from an irrigation district with surplus supplies. The rent is $540. He guides me back into the main store with its displays of fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, cold cuts, and baked goods. Inside, a Wonderful media specialist sees that Resnick needs to be rescued. Summer or not, theyre dressed in shirt layered upon shirt and the same no-name dusty blue jeans. Tell me, he asked, though it wasnt entirely a question. He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. Who would have thought that people would be asking their bartender to fix them a Pomtini? he said. When the rain returns, some of the ground will be replanted in pistachios, a tree that can better withstand drought. In the kitchen corner, cases of bottled water are stacked halfway up the wall. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. Jun 27, 2007. Sure enough, cozied up next to the bank of the aqueduct, I see a glint. No way, according to Vidovich and his longtime associates. The big man with the goatee behind the wheel is Bernard Puget, a Basque sheepmans son who oversees these orchards. Hes a 61-year-old developer who grew up on a farm in Sunnyvale in the heart of what would become the Silicon Valley. Stephen Vidovich retired but kept a watchful eye on the company, getting daily reports and giving advice, John Vidovich told the San Jose Mercury News after his father's death. He studied the situation. The great drought is officially over. The curtains were made of a fabric woven in Venice and substantial enough that they might finish off a person who happened to be looking out the window in the throes of an earthquake. The water is filtered for arsenic, boron, and other salts, and the monthly tests show no violation of state or federal standards. But his egotheres no controlling that., Resnick had heard it all before. 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. Fifty-three percent of our employees are obese, and 12 percent of them have diabetes., The growers start to fidget. Menu. The space for a familys secrets is only a few feet. 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. 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. Why not California? Share with Us. Theres a lot to commend here, I tell Anzaldo, but where does persuasion end and coercion begin?, As a second-generation Mexican American, Anzaldo says he knows the powerful clench of fast food and sugar among his own family. When the Depression struck, his parents migrated to Middlebush, New Jersey, where they bought a few trucks and peddled coffee and pots and pans. For years, agriculture has been given a wide berth when it comes to monopolistic practices. So its a really extraordinary kind of development thats never happened in agriculture in California before really to raise the living of your workers. No rain in five years. She wanted me to put our $5 million in an account, draw interest, and we could live happily on the 50 grand a year.. This doesnt count the 21,000 acres of grapefruits and limes hes growing in Texas and Mexico. Hes got another meeting to attend. But not even the two projects working in perfect tandem can defy drought. She didnt understand his drive. Its bringing water from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. Already mechanization is changing, you know, the labor situation. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. Because it is a community of all Hispanics.. The 789 acre project . I'm going to let the regulatory agencies go through their process and go from there. Now, Pace said, Vidovich will do the same thing on a larger scale by moving Kings and Tulare groundwater to Kern County. My dust cloud tells him Im getting close. Lynda assisted her with the design and color scheme but otherwise has remained hands-off. A meat store, an auto repair, a pool hall, and an arcade pass for a commercial strip. Sitting in his mansion in 2008, he already counted more than 100,000 acres of orchards across five counties. It was a hit. A cross of Jesus hangs from the bedpost. 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. Two strains of salmonella found in their pistachios had caused a multistate outbreak of illnesses. The Kings is as erratic a river as the Kern so floodwaters are unpredictable. Pink and white oleanders divide the highway, and every third vehicle that whooshes by is a big rig. Angelica, one of four sisters, runs the restaurant. According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a farm bill supporter, nearly 75 percent of the bill's $300 billion will aid nutrition programs such as food stamps and emergency food providers and provide free fresh fruits and vegetables in public schools. 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. Photo courtesy of Trent Davis Bailey/The California Sunday Magazine. Theres an unease about the room. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. All but a handful come from Mexico. A van pulls up to the curb, and the door slides open. It would return as tule fog to remind the white man of his theft. If he were on the scene today, hed have to add sashed Queens to the list. 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 had left for the cornfields a few minutes before the killings.. The harvest begins in January with one type of mandarin and ends in December with another type of mandarin and in between spills forth everything in your supermarket produce and dairy aisles except for bananas and mangoes, though the farmers here are working on the tropical, too. They married in 1972, and he sold the alarm company for $100 million. Hed been diagnosed with early prostate cancer and had no doubt that the juice was keeping him well. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. The water will be stripped from the land and sold to developers of new towns both here and over the mountain. There, he tells me, in the shadow of the states great concrete vein moving snowmelt north to south, I will find a private, off-the-books pipeline that Stewart Resnick has built to keep his trees from dying. Tracts of houses, Californias last affordable dream, civilize three or four exits, and then its back to the open road splattered with the guts and feathers of chickens that jumped ship on the slaughterhouse drive. Vidovich is gobbling up all the parcels he can so he can keep on pumping, Mitchell said. for rent by owner sacramento craigslist; coleman . Giant pincers manned by a single worker grab the tree by the throat and start shaking. His second son is a psychiatrist. 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. I stick to the left lane and try to stay ahead of the pack. But those 20,000 acres near the town of Pixley came with an endowment: a little spit of earth that produced endless amounts of groundwater. Hes headed to the Wonderful plant, 13 miles north of Lost Hills, to drop off his load. It cant be farmed like it was, he says. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. Whether he realizes it, hes part of the biggest pistachio harvest in history. Ultimately,youre going to dry up that aquifer under the earth, and thats whats happening now. But out in the Buena Vista Water Storage District where Vidovich chairs the board, his original detractors all love him, Page said. A fully equipped teaching kitchen will turn the harvest into school lunches. Thats all fine and good, Resnick replied, but what about the $1 million-plus hed spent on lawyers fees? Selfo works 50 hours a week as an irrigator. The making of a billionaire over the next half-century was a series of dots that connected in the California sunshine. Already, the high school is filled with hundreds of students bused in from farmworker towns that are among the poorest communities in the West.

When Were Paved Roads Invented, Angela Morrison Clinton Morrison Wife, Articles J