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Pistachio Wars Movie Trailer HD - Available on Watermelon+ November 3
Available to watch at home on digital platforms November 7
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From Executive Producer Adam McKay (THE BIG SHORT, VICE), a journalist follows a trickle of information upstream, leading to revelations about California's water and the couple accused of hoarding it to build their own agricultural empire.
Transcript
00:01Behind these gates is one of the biggest mansions in Beverly Hills.
00:04The people who live here aren't movie stars, they're farmers.
00:07The biggest in California.
00:09Stewart and Linda Resnick.
00:11They make those crazy pistachio ads.
00:13Before the Resnicks, people barely ate these things.
00:16The entire demand was created by marketing.
00:18Sales of pistachios have not skyrocketed in the last 30 seconds.
00:23Well, let's take care of that.
00:24When we started filming, California was in the middle of its worst drought in history.
00:32And the thing about pistachios, it takes a lot of water to grow them.
00:36In a single year, the Resnick's farms use more water than San Francisco uses for a decade.
00:44We're in a struggle now for a commodity that's short and is water.
00:48The Resnick's, they got into farming almost by accident.
00:51First buying up land from oil companies.
00:52It turned out, not only were their farms right on top of an active oil field,
00:56they were using oil waste water to irrigate their crops.
01:01Most oil fields produce water as a waste product.
01:05Chevron takes that water and brings it into agricultural use.
01:09Over the course of the century, the Central Valley was converted from a lush natural habitat
01:14into a high-tech agricultural wasteland.
01:17We're getting a lot of benzene and ethyl benzene.
01:19Historically, Iran has always been the world's biggest exporter of pistachios.
01:31After the Iranian revolution, the U.S. embargo allowed California's tiny industry to get a global foothold.
01:37When we dug into some records, we found that the Resnicks were giving millions to all sorts of lobby groups
01:42who were hawkish on Iran.
01:44What is Iran doing around the world?
01:46Well, they're funding terrorism.
01:49South of the Resnicks' fields, you can find a giant water bank.
01:53In the 90s, they lobbied to privatize it, and they got it for basically nothing.
01:57It's hard to fully grasp what private control of California's water supply really means.
02:02Why does no one talk about it?
02:04Why? Because they are afraid.
02:06Money.
02:07Money.
02:07Money.
02:08Money.
02:08Money.
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