00:05In 2015, California was at the peak of its worst drought in history.
00:11The news was full of scary stories.
00:15Farmers tearing out their crops.
00:18They said the state was on the verge of a modern day dust bowl.
00:24I was living in LA at the time, so we decided to take a road trip to see this catastrophe
00:29for ourselves.
00:35This is the heartland of California agriculture.
00:39It was supposed to be the epicenter of the drought.
00:42But the first thing we noticed when we got out here was that there were new plantings going in everywhere.
00:49Massive fields of pistachios and almonds spreading out as far as the eye could see.
00:56Farmers were planting thousands of acres of water-hungry new crops, all during the worst drought in history.
01:09To find out what was going on, we would have to go back to LA.
01:13The people who own these farms live in Beverly Hills.
01:18Billionaire Stewart and Linda Resnick are the world's biggest farmers of tree nuts.
01:23She's a child of Hollywood.
01:24He's a businessman with ties to the mob.
01:30Gimmicky mass marketing is a secret to their success.
01:35They single-handedly created a boom around pistachios.
01:39Folks, evidently sales of pistachios have not skyrocketed in the last 30 seconds due to a lack of branding.
01:46Well, let's take care of that.
01:48Pistachio. Pistachio. Wait for it.
01:52Pistachio.
01:54Pistachio.
02:04Somehow, there was no water shortage for these billionaires.
02:08While everyone else was told to conserve, they were expanding during the drought.
02:13News stories made it all about the weather, as if the drought was natural and inevitable.
02:19But as we discovered, the real causes of California's water shortages are man-made.
02:24They're political.
02:26Farms use 80% of the state's water supply.
02:29This one giant corporate farm owned by the Resnicks uses more water than the entire population of LA.
02:36There's plenty of water, but it's been privatized by a small group of powerful farmers
02:41to grow snack foods in the middle of the desert.
02:50Our road trip took us deep into the dusty heart of California.
02:56The eco-hippie paradise where farming and oil production lived side by side.
03:01When anybody like you wants to run my life, I get upset.
03:05Sir, nobody's running your life.
03:06If you'd like to work in the oil industry, that's your right.
03:10I have a right to be an environmentalist.
03:14You can be as stupid as you want.
03:16And you have that privilege.
03:20We met farm workers in small towns where the tap water was toxic.
03:24Or not running at all.
03:27Why does no one talk about it?
03:29Why? Because they are afraid.
03:31Money.
03:32Money.
03:33Money.
03:35Food, beauty,prize, roads,gives, foods, planets.
03:35POTNICK From the state
03:36level right down to the smallest local district, water was being privatized.
03:40Exactly.
03:40The illegal pumping here, the illegal pumping that you're saying here, is directly affecting the world.
03:44Yes.
03:44So why is that not being talked about?
03:46Because money.
03:49American greed.
03:53And when we crossed paths with a bunch of farm lobbyists, we discovered something surprising about the pistachio boom.
03:59And Iran could go ahead and start exporting to the United States.
04:03It was all dependent on an embargo of imports from Iran.
04:07We have Arabs that live around here.
04:09We have Arabs that take care of, that own pistachio orchards.
04:13Well, how do you feel?
04:15You know, does a Muslim bother you?
04:18The secret to world peace is pistachios.
04:25Dennis Rodman does it because he's nuts.
04:28Wonderful pistachios.
04:30Get cracking.
