All stick, no carrot 

It's David and Goliath all over again, except the underdogs have layers of legal troubles and expenses between them and the giant they hope to, if not slay, at least subdue. I'm talking about the little farmers of Cuyama facing off against Big Carrot—Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms—two massive corporate growers with 80 percent of the U.S. carrot market that are suing their neighbors in an effort to secure their water rights from a seriously depleted basin at the expense of their smaller neighbors. I know! Dick move, amirite?

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To get a scale of the twee David versus the behemoth Goliath, let me introduce you to Stephen Gliessman and his wife Roberta Jaffe and their 5-acre Condor's Hope Vineyard that uses less than a whopping 2 acre-feet of water a year (or about 650,000 gallons). Sure, that's a lot of water to be turned into wine (Where's Jesus when you need him?). Meanwhile, Bolthouse and Grimmway used 28,500 acre-feet last year, or more than 9.28 billion gallons! And they want to make sure they can keep sucking the basin dry even if it means screwing their neighbors.

Another user, John Caufield, runs beef cattle and uses just half to three-quarters of an acre-foot per year. He's not getting rich, either. These farmers and ranchers are trying to be sustainable in their practices, but because Big Carrot is suing them and the groundwater basin is currently in adjudication to determine who gets the agua, these small farmers are paying monthly legal bills they can't afford.

"Looking at it, we've got a lawsuit that's filed by an entity or entities that effectively have a bottomless resource, and these things can take decades to resolve," Caufield told New Times' sister paper, the Sun. "The plaintiff has unbounded resources and time, so there's nothing on the horizon of when this will end."

Suck it, little guys! What else really sucks is Bolthouse and Grimmway both had seats at the table to decide an equitable path forward to save the basin and share the water.

The Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is critically overdrafted, and in 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act that required Cuyama and 20 other overdrafted basin areas to form groundwater sustainability agencies and create plans designed to bring their basins back into balance. The state approved Cuyama's plan that calls for a 60 percent reduction in groundwater use over 20 years.

Representatives of Big Carrot sat on the agency's board, able to give their input. They helped create the very plan they've now decided they don't like and sued their neighbors instead.

Caufield is understandably frustrated: "To have their own attorneys challenge the plan that their representatives voted for seems odd," he said.

"This is all uncharted territory for California water," Condor's Hope Vineyard co-owner Gliessman said. "Traditionally adjudications have been awarded on the basis of historical use. This is where we don't know what's going to happen. If it ends up being historical use, you know who's going to get the water: the ones who caused the overdraft in the first place."

Bolthouse and Grimmway are currently still serving more than 300 residents lawsuits, and if they fail to lawyer-up and fight, they risk losing their water rights altogether.

Two other sustainable row crop farmers, husband and wife Jean Gaillard and Meg Brown, can see Bolthouse and Grimmways' verdant, overwatered fields from their front porch.

"Of course, it's always a disappointment when you see that, when you're definitely feeling the big guys want to overrun you and say, 'We've got more money, we can control the water,' and this and that," Gaillard said. "My opinion is the water should be more equitably distributed. It's not only for the big moneymakers, [but for] so many people living out here."

Gaillard and Brown use dry farming techniques and just 1.4 acre-feet of groundwater per year, but even that scant usage is at risk if Big Carrot is allowed to take all the water and leave Cuyama a barren waterless wasteland. They and other local farmers have few options.

Ella Boyajian and her husband, Tanner, were served by Bolthouse and Grimmway shortly after they purchased their farm in 2021, and their vision of a sustainable property on which to raise their two young daughters is now imperiled.

"The lawsuit has complicated matters because I think there's a fear [of] will we have enough water rights after the adjudication to do the dreams we have on the property?" Boyajian lamented.

It may seem like a pebble in a slingshot, but they're fighting back the only way they can, with a movement called Stand With Cuyama and a call to boycott Bolthouse and Grimmway carrots. Their petition garnered 7,644 signatures as of Oct. 11.

"We are thrilled with that because the valley is less than 2,000 people, and we'd like that momentum to continue and have more people learn about our struggle and the cause," Boyajian said. "If we could impact their sales in one specific area like carrots, if we could make an impact on that area, that could be leveraged to negotiate or talk to us because they might see that trend of sales decreasing."

But how do you know which carrots not to buy? That's the problem. Δ

The Shredder prefers its carrots glazed and grown by sustainable farmers. Send your recipe to [email protected].