Most valuable agricultural crop in the Valley? It's water!

Published online on Monday, Sep. 07, 2009

Farmers want water for crops, environmentalists want water for fish. Both are destined to end up losers because water always flows -- not downhill, as is taught in school -- but straight to cash.

In the West, suburban development is king, and it appears that nothing will change that fact. For every farmer with dirt under his fingernails, there is another willing to trade in his overalls for a suit and developer's blueprints.

Or for a developer's money.

Need some examples?

The Boswell family drained Tulare Lake, gained control of a large chunk of the Kings River, became the biggest cotton farmers in the world and developed the Arizona retirement town of Sun City. Now the Boswells wants to plant 10,000 homes east of Exeter in Yokohl Valley.

The roots of development giant Castle & Cooke were growing pineapples in Hawaii under the Dole banner. Castle & Cooke has big plans for Rio Mesa in Madera County -- visions underpinned by obtaining water rights from Los Angeles billionaire Stewart Resnick's vast Kern County agricultural empire.

And, now, Sandridge Partners, based in Sunnyvale, has agreed to permanently transfer water rights from its Kings County farm holdings to a water agency in Southern California. The price: $73 million. The water's probable new use: new development in San Bernardino County.

So much for the virtues of tilling the soil.

By the way, you -- the taxpayer -- have subsidized Sandridge Partners for years.

The company, according to Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog, received $6.8 million in farm subsidies from 1995 through 2006, primarily for cotton.

The Sandridge Partners' farm is part of the Dudley Ridge Water District, which, in turn, is a member of the Kern Water Bank. The water bank was begun with $74 million of public investment, and now is controlled by Resnick, the king of pistachios, almonds and pomegranates.

How long before Resnick -- or heirs -- tire of cranking out profits by the acre and get many times richer peddling water by the acre foot?

Here's the deal: Public policy in California long held that growing food and fiber was important. A vast network of dams and canals was put together, mostly on the public's dime, and the San Joaquin Valley bloomed.

But as the demand for residential water has increased and environmentalists have sought protection for wildlife, old policies have given way to new realities.

In the Valley, the water discussion usually is framed as farmers versus environmentalists. But the debate really is three-dimensional, and it additionally involves developers with hopes of turning bare dirt into master-planned communities. The only way their dreams of gated tracts can be realized is by buying up rights to water that once grew almonds, cotton and the like.

Now, you'd be mistaken if you think that the moral of this story is that sometimes it's impossible to distinguish between a farmer and a developer.

My point is much bigger: As water becomes even more valuable west of the 100th meridian, it increasingly will flow toward wealth. And, with California's wealth concentrated on the coast, who will stop the exodus of water from the Valley?

Not the politicians.

And certainly not the Valley's corporate farmers, who know that water -- of all the crops -- is king.