“That land is so rich you could eat it with a spoon!” exclaimed Tom Willey, small-scale organic farmer in California’s Central Valley, referring to the swath of land on the west side of the Valley that makes up the Westlands Water District.
He went on: “I swear to God, they used to say that any idiot could be a good farmer out there because the soil was just so fertile. It was true, absolutely true. And there’s no question that, under a different set of circumstances, 160 acre farms could have been successful out there.”
That figure, 160 acres, is significant. Until 1982, there was a law on the books—the 1902 Reclamation Act— that limited the size of farms allowed to use government subsidized irrigation water across the Western U.S. to just 160 acres. That’s much, much smaller than the kind of massive-scale agricultural development that characterizes California farming in general and the Central Valley in particular.
What may sound to modern readers like a quaint rule was actually meant to be an important safeguard against consolidation of land, power and wealth in the developing West. Most people understand that California agriculture is big, but unless you’ve spent time in the Central Valley it’s hard to imagine how vast the industry really is. Farms stretch for un-interrupted miles, sprawling across tens of thousands of acres. The Westlands Water District spans 600,000 acres (the size of Rhode Island) with fewer than 600 landowners. And farmland values are sky-high in California—the USDA’s 2015 Land Values Summary lists California’s average cropland price at $10,690/acre with strawberry land on the Central Coast rumored to be selling this year for $60,000/acre. This makes it nearly impossible for aspiring farmers, whether they’re young folks or former farm workers, to become farm owners. Had the 160 acre rule been enforced, the situation would be much different; California agriculture, at least in places using subsidized irrigation water, would have been dominated by family-scale farms. So what happened?
In the late 1970s, a group of Fresno-based activists trained a laser focus on this rule and on enforcement of Reclamation Law to promote small farm development, stirring up a surprising—if forgotten—amount of dust.
National Land for People (NLP) was founded in 1964 by a journalist, photographer and energetic, populist visionary from Wisconsin named George Ballis. NLP’s goal was straightforward: they wanted small farmers and farm workers to own the 160 acre parcels that the Reclamation Act promised. They drew their motto—La Tierra Pertenece al que la Trabaja/Land Belongs to Those Who Work It—from Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
Ballis teamed up with a group of people who were committed to bringing attention to the fact that water law was not being enforced in California—and that a small collection of large landowners were getting rich off of government water subsidy. There was Berge Bulbulian, Armenian raisin-grape grower and self-described “farmer front-man” with a sharp wit and socialist politics; Marc Lasher, a social worker from New York who wanted to work for justice in the “belly of the monster”; Mary Louise Frampton, a young civil rights lawyer with a novel (and successful) approach to suing for enforcement of the law; Eddie Nolan, organizer of African American farmers in the Valley, and Jessie De La Cruz, one of the first female organizers for the United Farm Workers who would go on to put together an important farming cooperative in the Valley. And there was Maia Ballis, George’s “collaborator in life,” joyful co-conspirator and talented graphic artist.
Fired up about what they saw as a wave of “water crimes” being committed in the Valley, the small, volunteer NLP team pieced together detailed records of “questionable land deals” in the Westlands Water District.
From a house-turned-organizing-office in Fresno, the group created maps, graphics, and a fiery newsletter sharing their findings with thousands of supporters. George Ballis pulled no punches. In the newsletter, he called corporate farming businesses “the biggies.” He further propagandized NLP’s work with a graphic of an over-sized dollar bill that read “Westlands Water District” on the top and “2 Billion Dollar Boondoggle” on the bottom, with the line “Paid for by U.S. Taxpayers” running up the side.
In spite of their straight-no-chaser rhetoric, NLP made friends in high places, earning the respect of Congressmen like George Miller and officials in the Department of the Interior, who oversaw Reclamation Act projects.
In addition to speaking truth to power in the Valley, the group also made many trips to Washington D.C. NLP members squeezed into a tiny van to drive across the country to testify at Congressional hearings, staying at the YMCA on their no-salary budget. In spite of Berge’s urging that NLP buy George a three-piece suit to wear for these occasions, he insisted on sporting a long beard and “hippie” clothes to the hearing. George didn’t soften his argument when he was before Congress either, exclaiming things like, “this isn’t a hearing, it’s a pep rally!”
However, building key political allies was not enough to force the government to stop the existing illegal actions in the Westlands. Scraping together a little money, the NLP hired Mary Louise Frampton in 1974 to sue the Department of Interior for not enforcing the Reclamation Act. Fresh out of law school and 24 years old, Mary Louise devised a unique strategy for the suit. Against all odds she won a court order halting land deals across the Western states. The NLP won appeal after appeal– all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979.
The Central Valley buzzed with controversy. NLP members were labeled “communists.” Even as Valley newspapers wrote of “the biggies” preparing for battle, Maia Ballis reported that, “It looked like we had won!” When the Department of the Interior held hearings on the proposed rules and regulations that they would then use to enforce the law, members of the NLP received death threats. Mary Louise remembers an FBI agent standing guard outside her motel room in El Centro as protection while she prepared to testify. Growers went to outrageous lengths to silence the NLP. According to Mary Louise, they flew helicopters over hearings to drown out testimony and pulled in huge farm equipment to kick up clouds of dust over the grand stands.
And then, in 1980, former Governor of California Ronald Reagan strode into the White House, bringing with him a whole new administration—and Department of the Interior. Some activists speculate that promises to overhaul the Reclamation Act helped him get elected.
Whether or not it was a campaign promise, Reagan’s administration worked with Congress to pass the Reclamation Reform Act. Defenders of the new law claimed Reagan’s changes “modernized” the Act, updating it to reflect the costs of farming in the 1980’s. From the NLP point of view, the law was gutted, with the acreage limitation raised to 960 and the residency requirement eliminated.
Berge Bulbulian read this as a classic capitalist maneuver. “You gamble on breaking the law to make as much profit as possible and then when the law is being enforced you use the profits you made to sway political interests to change the law so your crimes are legal.”
In 1982, NLP admitted defeat on the water issue. George wrote in an NLP newsletter, “We lost not just because of biggie bucks. We lost because what we advocated is against the warp of our time.” But, he insisted, their work was not over: “The struggle to create a democratic, responsible and sustainable food system goes on […] Now we turn our full attention to creating new cultural, social, economic realities on a small scale.“
In what could be seen as a tactical shift, or possibly as retreat, George, Maia and Marc uprooted NLP from the Valley, planting it again on 40 acres they called Sun Mountain, east of Fresno at the base of the Sierra Nevada. Here National Land for People morphed into the People Food and Land Foundation and George poured his boundless energy into building a passive solar house, creating perennial gardens and demonstrating what sustainable living could look like—outside of the reach of “the biggies.”
NLP didn’t win their battle. California farming continued to consolidate and corporate land-holdings ballooned. It’s easy to superimpose 2015 cynicism onto this National Land for the People story and wonder if their Reclamation Act enforcement fervor was foolish. What’s striking about Berge, Maia, George, Marc, Mary Louise and all the other NLP crusaders is the tremendous optimism and idealism that they brought to their work. NLP’s heyday was 30 years ago, not 100, and yet they held an entirely different vision for the Valley—one that would have broken down massive landholdings held by white landowners and transferred them to small farmers and farm workers of color. They looked at the stark, mostly unpopulated land of Westlands and imagined a string of thriving communities and a base for democracy in the Valley. Their optimism, it seems, was the ultimate political act.
Today, with water on everyone’s mind, Californians have a rare opportunity to rethink how we want to use this precious, and highly subsidized, resource. Is it to deliver profit into the hands of a few? Or is there another possibility?
Tom Willey wistfully reflected, “I once wished to hell I’da had 160 acres out there, really.” For many activists in the California food movement, it’s hard not to agree.
Photo Caption: Taken in July, 2015 of NLP members (from right to left) Marc Lasher, Berge Bulbulian, Maia Ballis and Mary Louise Frampton.
Cal Ag Roots stories focus on pivotal moments in the development of California agriculture. This story and podcast are the second in a three-part series called Docks to Delta, which launched with a live event aboard the Capitol Corridor train in the fall of 2015.
Many thanks to Audio Producer Aubrey White, storytellers Tom Willey, Mary Louise Frampton, Maia Ballis, Berge Bulbulian, Marc Lasher, John Heywood and to the Cal Ag Roots Advisory Council including Lisa Morehouse, Janaki Jagganath and Mario Sifuentez who provided crucial editorial advice for this project. Thanks also to historian Clifford Welch, who provided critical background information about this story as well as connection to NLP members.