The Water Wars: National Land for People and National Land for People Foundation

The 1902 Reclamation Law intended to use taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water projects with dams, canals & power plants in the 17 western states to spread homesteading and promote economic development. Congress intended to develop the arid lands of the western US into healthy rural communities using reliable surface water from areas with more rain or snowmelt. Groundwater pumping & praying for rain had not worked.

California’s Central Valley Irrigation Project (CVP) that irrigates Westlands Water District (west of Fresno) was built in 1962-68 to move water diverted from Sierra snowmelt river water into a concrete-lined canal. The District spans 600,000 acres (about 1/2 size of New York City) with less than 600 landowners. The 20 biggest owners included Standard Oil and the Santa Fe Railroad. The Reclamation Law water contracts offered cheap, federally subsidized irrigation water from CVP for 10 years in exchange for the agreement to sell all land over 160 acres (1/4 of an sq. mi.) in 160-acre parcels at dry land values: $100 – $200 an acre by the 1970s.

Farmland values are now high in California – in 2020 California’s average cropland price was about $10,690 per acre & pasture about $2,000. Hedge funds offered $30,000 to $40,000 an acre with plans to monetize the water rights (to sell water for profit or development) when they permanently retire crops. Westlands & the CVP lie next to U.S. Interstate 5 – a natural corridor for development between Los Angeles & San Francisco.

Roots of People Food & Land Foundation

Tough, energetic young George Ballis had a passion for truth & justice – social, economic, political & environmental. His work was the taproot of the People Food & Land Foundation. A high school football star, and WWII Marine with a U. of Minn. dual degree in journalism & political science, he came to Fresno with his first wife in 1953 as editor of a weekly AFL-CIO labor council newspaper.

His muckraking journalism & documentary photography topics were the poor working/living conditions of farm workers, Jim Crow trade unions, shady deals & shoddy construction. In 1957 Dorothea Lange mentored George in his documentary photography while her water expert husband, University of California economics professor, Paul Taylor, mentored him in California water. Dr. Taylor was adamant that the big farms should get no unjust economic enrichment due to the interest-free federal tax subsidy.

In 1958 George and two other idealistic Young Democrats did the first tabulation of the shockingly large CVP agricultural land holdings getting huge federal water and crop subsidies (See the map on the wall in photo “No on 1”).

So George organized the Western Water & Power Users (WWPU). The group included small farmers from throughout the Central Valley who wanted to see the fruition of the water law promise. They hoped to see healthy small farm communities like on the Eastside of the Central Valley, flourishing in the area then dominated by huge farms with their colonial-like control of resources. In 1959 WWPU took their map to Wash DC to lobby for changes in the law to make it more difficult for large landowners to get illegal irrigation water. The map showing the extensive holding of the big farms turned the tide.

During 1963-66 George became a freelance photojournalist and organizer working on Civil Rights, farm worker unionization. George’s image of Cesar Chavez leading the march to Sacramento on the cover of Life magazine brought them national attention. He organized & photographed for the United Farmworkers (UFW) and created a community organizer’s training program with Chuck Gardinier for the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). He also worked on environmental issues and did documentary films and nature photography.

George was manager for Democrat B.F.Sisk’s congressional campaign, but quit when he saw big Republican $$ donations from large Westside landowners. Sisk’s promises of rural development to Congress helped the landowners get the subsidized federal & state irrigation water they wanted, while planning to avoid acreage limitation they didn’t want. A dam in the system is named after him.

George began to collaborate with Maia while making his first film. “I Am Joaquin” was a celebration of Chicano culture with Teatro Campesino & Luis Valdez. George & Maia later married and collaborated on a series of photo exhibits, books & documentary films on topics like self-help housing, Mexican Americans in the Southwest, California agriculture, farm workers, the black community in Oakland, Pit River Indians of N. Ca., & community organizers in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At SunMt he made extensive indy media videos in support of community actions in Fresno. His images and films celebrate the strength & dignity of workers and people standing up for justice.

The couple pursued a green lifestyle. Their urban front yard became edible landscaping. In 1973 George & Maia joined students Marc Lasher & Sue Stirling in organizing 4 regions of Fresno City into food-buying clubs for students & low-income residents. They soon made it an NLP project to move the clubs to a co-op storefront “Our Store” in central Fresno with 400 all-volunteer working members and inspired more rural buying clubs & storefronts.

In 1974 Westland’s water contracts began to come due. George found some questionable sales & recruited volunteers to help research more sales. Based on additional phony sales, George reactivated WWPU and they created 2 non-profit corporations: National Land for People (NLP) to lobby, and the National Land for People Foundation (NLPF, later to become People Food & Land Foundation) to do public education & file lawsuits on the issue full time. George called large landowners “Biggies” in playful irreverence for their social & economic power. He reframed their huge water “subsidies” as “corporate water welfare.”

Land for People Organic Farm

 The 2 organizations worked on 2 strategies that included developing structures to support small farms like food co-ops, producers co-ops, and farmers’ markets, and demonstrating organic growing and new drought-resistant crops, all while working to enforce Reclamation Law. George called Earth/Nature “Big Mama” in loving appreciation, and his son John became the NLPF farm manager. The farm/office resident staff worked in the fields.

1974 With help from supporters and foundations, NLPF hired attorney Mary Louise Frampton to sue the Department of Interior for not enforcing the Reclamation Act. Against the odds, her legal strategy won a dramatic court order halting land deals across the irrigated West. It so angered farmers, there were death threats against Frampton. Though Frampton helped NLPF win appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979, the law was never enforced as intended. The U.S. Congress so weakened the law that it had little effect.

By 1982, NLP & NLPF had won the battle, but lost the water war. George said “We lost not just because of biggie bucks. We lost because what we advocated is against the warp of our time.” The political climate of the Reagan era was bigger ag = better.

Organizational Projects and Ripple Effects

• CERTIFIED FARMERS MARKETS: NLP’s Marc Lasher organized 2 markets which continue to provide fresh local food direct to consumers supporting rural economics & building community.

• CONSUMER-TO-FARM MARKETING: Marc & Maia developed a direct marketing map for consumers to buy in boxes direct from local farmers. Later morphed into more farms doing farmers. Later morphed into more farms doing value added packaging and pre-season subscription memberships to a farm’s produce. In CSA’s – community supported agriculture, members prepay seasonally and pick up weekly boxes of the current crops. Consumers can now contract directly with the producers. Buyer groups have a personal connection with the growers and get high-quality local produce. The farmer gets a fair, stable price in an assured market; and the resources support the local economy and encourages local food security.

• FARMER CO-OP MARKETING: Marc also created San Joaquin Valley Farmers Co-op to help small farmers market their crops. The co-op worked when operating with the standard fluctuating market pricing. Marc asked markets to agree to pay the same fair price all season. They happily paid a low price in early season (when prices are usually high) but broke the agreement when they could get cheaper prices elsewhere.

• ORGANIC CERTIFICATION: George was a founding board member of the local Certified Organic Growers, (CCOF). Certification continues to ensure consumers get the highest nutrition & quality food.

• GROWING: the small farm/office grew CCOF organic culinary herbs, vegetables & persimmons for market; but also started researching drought tolerant crops. This is the work that expanded at SunMt Research Center and continues today. Events included Food Exploring where Maia prepared their herbal teas, and created meals using wild edibles, edible flowers & unusual drought tolerant & arid land crops.

• COMPOSTING: NLPF’s farm composted all the leaves from the City of Fresno, winning a recycling award. Composting built garden soil tilth while reducing the waste stream. They noticed a couple of landscapers cyclone fenced an area nearby where they began composting their yard waste and soon were propagating their own plants.

• FOOD EDUCATION: Maia prepared Food Exploring Meals for other groups and for NLP members monthly to expose people to wild edible, culinary herbs & flowers and unusual crops. She also published recipes from the favorites of her explorer’s meals in their monthly newsletter. Hopefully this expanded the food & gardening choices of the members – 800 at peak levels… See SunMt Herbal Cookery e-book on the home page.

• FOOD CO-OP: George & Maia joined Marc & fellow student Susan Stirling in organizing Fresno City into 4 food buying clubs in 1973. When NLP was formed the next year, Marc had joined George & Maia as staff and full time organized the clubs into a store front called Our Store. All volunteer labor from 400 members for reduced prices from food sold in bulk. Free clothing exchange & Folk dancing at tea house tasting night. Though the food co-ops & buying clubs died in the 2000’s, natural food & grocery stores copied the system of bulk items in bins to this day, reducing packaging waste and helping lower costs.

• SEMINARS IN AGRICULTURAL REALITY bus tours. George Ballis organized a full day of visceral experience & information from the sources, for the hundreds who took them. One tour was for the U.S. Senate before they held hearings that filled the Fresno City College auditorium with would-be farmland buyers. Frankie Lappe & Joe Collins of Food First and Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange were inspired by George’s tours to do their own Reality cultural trips to create grassroots change, powered by people-to-people ties.

Sample Seminar:

1. Tourists spent the night camped at the farm to

2. rise at 4:30AM and get on the bus by 5:00AM. This also lets them experience when farm  workers rise to go to work.

3. Willoughby Houk & sons:  a two generation family cotton farm in Firebaugh where Houk discussed the National Farmers Union efforts to use their collective power to get fairer payment than 10% on processed food dollars.  American farmers still get about 11.6 cents of every dollar spent on food in the U.S.

4. Drive into the Westlands Water District to see the vast fields of monoculture.

5. CVP: Stop at the canal of the Central Valley Irrigation Project to see the scale and hear about the intent of the law that allowed construction.

6. Mendota:  Stop for breakfast and hear from the mayor about residents not being able to access residential water when the huge project was feeding crops.

7. Harris Farms talk with owner John Harris with 100,000 head of cattle and feedlot on 800 acres.

8. Stone Land Co talk with Jack Stone of a large cotton farm and hear his story.

9. Lanare community co-op farm in the black community, and/or the small co-op farm of 7 former UFW farm labor organizers. Both farms got help from the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO ) Westside Planning Group to finance their farm land and improvements.

10. Berge Bulbulian. Eastside small farm: Go to the small farm dominated Eastside to visit the 2nd generation grape grower & NLP Board President. He would talk about the importance of keeping the means of food production local & small to preserve a more democratic society.

11. Fresno biodynamic vegetable garden of student Jack Cashion on backyard intensive food production.

12. Our Store Fresno Community Co-op food store & activity center.

13. Return to the NLPF farm to tour the gardens and do food tasting.

1974 to present BOARD Members

Farmers: Berge Bulbulian, Jessie De La Cruz, Victor Bowker, Jake Kirihara, Gus Stamenson, Charles Magneson, Jose Reyes, Marin Baiz, Vic Bedoian, Jill Hannum

Non-farmer members: Don Loweburg, Saul Eskin, Malyn Rose, Susan Raycraft, David Nesmith, Ann Appley, David Crabtree, Richard Stone, Isabel Mejorado, Linda Haymond, Jeremy Hofer, Chris Velez.

Advisory Board: Dwight Underhill, Jem Bluestein

CURRENT STAFF: John Heywood, Exec Director pro bono

STAFF & VOLUNTEERS since 1974
George Ballis, Maia Ballis, Marc Lasher, Jack Cashion, Dick Pearson, Geneva Gillard, Jim Eklund, Dave Heavyside, Lupe Ortiz, Jessie De La Cruz, Hope Lopez, David Nesmith, Chuck Gardenier, John Ballis, Victoria Sortor, Ray Hemenez, Donna Martin, Barbara Perzigian, Ann Williamson, Allan Eberhardt, Allison Switzer, Lang Russell & Lynette Clancy Ballis

INTERNS NLP: Carrie Austin; SunMt: Maria Carter, Stephanie Crandall, Ashley Boujikian.

People Food & Land Foundation at SunMt Research Center

The remaining staff (George & Maia Ballis, and Marc Lasher) shifted focus of their mission to the growing research they had been doing at the farm-office. In 1983 they found undeveloped Sierra foothill property in Fresno county where they could demonstrate their vision of possible futures. NLP was closed and NLPF was renamed People Food & Land Foundation (PFLF) to reflect the organization’s change in direction as they began to create SunMt Research Center.

More History

California State University Fresno Madden Library, Special Collections section on WATER, National Land for People collection (link)

CADILLAC DESERT Marc Reiser (link)

THE DREAMT LAND Mark Arax (link)

FRESNO BEE ARTICLE (link)

CalAg Roots Podcast: Can Land Belong to Those Who Work It? Ildi Carlisle-Cummins (link)