When Big Oil Owns Your Soil | Parched

California is the third largest oil-producing state in the country. A lot of people don't realize that. When they think of California, they think of vineyards and Hollywood. But we've been living with oil and gas production since the late 19th century. Kern County is really the epicenter of oil production in California, where about 80% of our state's oil is produced.

NARRATOR: The Central Valley, where half of Kern County lies, produces 25% of America's food. Oil and agriculture have always had a tenuous relationship here. I make my living on the surface. They make their living below.

NARRATOR: Keith Gardiner and his business partner, Holly King, have farmed in Kern County for 22 years, right alongside big oil.

HOLLY KING: You have two owners on the same piece of property, one who owns the minerals and the farmer who owns the surface.

KEITH GARDINER: A land man from an oil company will call or come out to your office and say, hey, the trucks are lined up. We're gonna be in there tomorrow. We want to drill here and here. Well, immediately, you get into a fight. You say, no, you're not. Yes, we are. No, you're not. Well, we're gonna sue you. And I'm just a little guy, you know. I can't stand to be sued by an oil company. So a lot of times, you just acquiesce, say, go ahead, you know. I can't fight you. We do have an obligation to allow them to access their minerals, and we're OK with that. We're not OK with we can do anything we want on your surface, because we're the big guys.

NARRATOR: Like Earl Tennant in West Virginia, they have seen substantial damage on their farm.

KEITH GARDINER: We noticed the overall health of the trees was not good. We started testing the water, and we found out that we had a lot of high salts. A lot of high chlorides. And those are just the death of almond trees. We took out about 8,000 trees. We suspected that billions of barrels of saltwater was getting injected into our freshwater zone. When you start taking our trees out, it's a problem.