From a helicopter, the flat and fertile San Joaquin Valley looks quilted with the specialty crops of a few huge irrigated farming operations. Pink-blooming nectarines, whiteflowered almonds, delicate strawberries and asparagus, citrus of all varieties, grapes and pistachios stretch in gargantuan parcels from the Coast Range toward the hazy Sierra Nevada in the east. Much of this bounty tends to be owned by concerns with names such as Tenneco, Superior Oil, Getty and Shell, giants that were drawn to Kern County by its heavy crude oil reserves, and stayed to farm the acreage above. And a healthy piece of acreage it is, from Tenneco’s 125,000 acres of irrigated farmland to the Superior Farming Company’s 33,576 acres, the 22,157 acres of Shell’s Belridge Farms and Getty’s Minnehoma Land and Farming Company’s spread of 10,000 acres.
From Tenneco’s Corporate Farming By ANN CRITTENDEN, Special to the New York Times (The New York Times); Financial Desk