A Kingdom from Dust

Located in Kern County is Lost Hills; the biggest farming community in America. Despite droughts, these farmers have managed to keep alive 79,000 acres of almonds, 73,000 acres of pistachios, 35,000 acres of grapes and 13,000 acres of mandarins. In the 1940's, Kern farmers bought shares in the San Joaquin river and the Sacramento river. Today they own almost 1 million acres of crops. Through the farmers partnership with the Central Valley Project - Water Association of Kern County and State Water Project - Water Education Foundation who built a hydraulic system, they have been able to access 1.4 million acre-feet of water annually.

The richest farmer in America is Stewart Resnick. He however is not your traditional farmer. "The land to him isn’t real. It’s an economy of scale on a scale no one’s ever tried here." He and his wife Lynda the “Pomegranate Queen" reside in LA.
Stewart Resnick's first business was Clean Time Building Maintenance. After graduating from UCLA, he sold his company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. He bought an alarm company. Which led to another company. In 1972, he sold the alarm company for $100 million. In the late 1970's he bought 2,500 acres of oranges and lemons and a packing house in Kern County for $9 million. Mobil and Texaco and Prudential Life were looking to unload their farms in Kern County; this is how Stewart Resnick became a pistachio, almond, and pomegranate grower. Stewart Resnick built a pipeline to keep his trees from dying, utilising water from unsuspecting farmers in an irrigation district in Tulare County - 40 miles away!
Today he and wife Lynda are worth $4.5 billion.

Initially reported by Mark Arax from The California Sunday Magazine. Photograph by Trent Davis Bailey.