Host Tom Willey interviews former National Land People leaders, Berge Bulbulian and Marc Lasher, local water activist Janaki Jagannath and John Heywood, Executive Director of People, Food and Land Foundation.
Four decades ago, the late social activist George Ballis and cohorts waged a nearly successful, if ultimately quixotic, campaign to enforce 1902 Reclamation Act rules limiting farm size to 160 acres in Fresno County’s sprawling Westlands Water District. California Institute for Rural Studies scholars recently retraced Ballis’ National Land for People history, in hopes of shedding light on Valley agriculture’s current state and future trajectory.