Land, Food Security, and Water Rights in the Central Valley: Farmworkers, the Westlands, and the National Land for People Movement

In the late 1940s University of California, Berkeley economist Paul S. Taylor and activists around the state began to push for the enforcement of the 1902 Reclamation Act, which limited the size of landowners receiving water from reclamation projects to 160 acres. Among his collaborators was George Ballis, an activist and photographer from the Central Valley.

As editor of the Valley Labor Citizen newspaper, Ballis documented the plight of migrant farmworkers, in particular the career of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, and was credited as one of the photojournalists that brought Chavez to the attention of a national audience. As an activist, Ballis led the National Land for People Movement in a “water war” against corporate farms. The organization filed suit against growers in the Westlands Water District in 1976 for the violation of the 1902 Water Reclamation Act, which limited the size of farms to 160 acres and prioritized federally reclaimed water to small farmers. Ballis believed that while pursuing the goal of unionization for farmworkers was a worthwhile endeavor, ultimately the balance of power remained unequal. Ballis saw the water reclamation act as a way of alleviating the poverty and suffering of migrant farmworkers and restoring the balance of power. Through breaking up large landholdings and redistributing (them along with the water rights) to the people who worked the land, Ballis envisioned radical realignment that addressed issues of food security in a way that contemporary critics of food deserts have all but ignored.