A Los Angeles private equity firm announced Monday it has acquired Central Valley grocery store owner The Save Mart Cos. Modesto-based Save Mart has about 200 stores in California and northern Nevada, including the Lucky California and FoodMaxx brands. It also operates a refrigerated transport company and is co-owner of a distribution center in Lathrop and a dairy processing plant in Turlock. Terms of Save Mart’s purchase by Kingswood Capital Management LP were not disclosed.
The Save Mart Cos. operates Save Mart and FoodMaxx stores in Kern County. It said in a news release the transaction will be transparent to customers and its 14,000 employees. In January 2021, Kingswood purchased Alameda-based Cost Plus World Market. It also owns a marine services business. “At Kingswood, our goal is to make good businesses even better, and The Save Mart Companies presents us with a great opportunity to do so,” Alex Wolf, Kingswood’s founder and managing partner, said in the same release. “Their 70 years of history in the Central Valley provides a strong foundation for future profitable growth, and we look forward to working with Chris and the team to position these iconic grocery brands for the future.”
One of the great challenges of our time is what to do with all that carbon in the atmosphere. On Tuesday, Kern County stepped forward with the seed of an answer. Or, multiple answers, as the case may be. One answer is to put it deep in the ground. Carbon sequestration, it is called. But there may be more solutions, and on Tuesday Kern County officials announced an innovative and potentially game-changing approach to discovering them. An approach that might be an example not just to California but the world.
Kern County, with help from the U.S. Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and other partners, will develop a 30 million square foot, 4,000 acre business park dedicated to dealing with carbon – a natural byproduct of fossil fuels and other emissions and the central culprit in climate change. And powering the whole thing – a 30,000 acre solar farm on land no longer viable for agriculture. The Clean Energy and Carbon Management Business Park in west Kern – still in the very early stages of development – is intended to be the home of private sector investment in new carbon management technologies, from Direct Air Capture to Green Hydrogen. All five county supervisors along with three key county administrators gathered Tuesday to make the announcement. Supervisor Zack Scrivner’s district includes much of the county’s oil fields. “This process will include a stakeholder process with our partners and community,” he said, “in understanding what types of industries and jobs could be a reality in just the next few years.”
Renewable energy brought $60 billion of private and public investment to the county over the last 15 years and the hope is that the business park can do it again. If any of this sounds vague, that’s because much of it is. The purpose of the research grant is to help Kern and its several partners – among them Cal State Bakersfield, the Kern Community College District, and the City of Bakersfield – in the development of clean carbon management industries. Kern County wasn’t the only local government making announcements about our energy future. The City of Bakersfield and the Kern Community College District made a separate announcement Tuesday afternoon about a Department of Energy research grant of their own – part of the same Local Energy Action Program – designed to help communities create plans that reduce local air pollution, increase energy resilience, and lower both utility costs and energy burdens. Bakersfield and Kern County are two of the inaugural 22 jurisdictions around the country receiving these DOE grants, funded by the Biden administration’s $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill.
It’s a celebration three years in the making. Esperanza Village on C and 5th streets in downtown Madera was officially dedicated Tuesday afternoon. “It’s much needed in the state of California, but specifically the Central Valley,” says Denice Carter with the Pacific Companies. “Especially in a downtown area where you have the services and infrastructure that’s already existing.”
The multi-million dollar project was a collaboration between the city of Madera, The Pacific Companies and MORES, funded by a grant from the California Strategic Growth Council. The project goes beyond constructing these buildings. “We’re going to be able to provide five miles of new sidewalks and we’re going to put solar street lights here in the downtown area with this project,” says Madera Mayor Santos Garcia.
Esperanza Village is fully occupied with low-income families, seniors and veterans. The mayor of Madera says this is an investment in local families. “That means we put an elevator in there,” he said. “It means that we also have internet. It means we have vibrant colors. We have good lighting in the rooms and outside.” The close proximity to stores and city government buildings is supposed to make it easier for people who live here. A few years ago, this was an underutilized parking lot – the mayor says this is a much better use of the space.
Most Americans don’t recognize just how much the agriculture industry affects their everyday lives. The connection is not solely confined to your grocery store, either—industries affected by the agricultural sector include food/beverage service, forestry, and textiles, just to name a few. Less than 2% of the American workforce was directly employed in agriculture in the year 2000, a drastic transition from 40% a century earlier. To improve consumer’s relationships with this industry, organizations like Future Farmers of America and 4-H help to bridge the gap between consumers and farmers and fight agricultural illiteracy from youth.
Stacker ranked each U.S. state by the size of its agriculture industry. To come up with the list, we analyzed USDA data including 2018 state agricultural overview reports and commodity values from 2012 ranked by the total value of agricultural products sold. We also took a look at the economic and environmental impact of the agriculture industry for each state, based on data from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, as well as how the industry affects residents and what aspects about that state make it ideal for agriculture.
States like Alaska and Hawaii generated a wide range of unique agricultural commodities due to climates that differ from the rest of the country. States such as Texas and Wisconsin produced crops and livestock like cotton, cattle, and dairy cows known worldwide for their quality. Of course, there are always the corn belt states of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas that provide a majority of the country’s corn supply thanks to level landscapes and nitrogen-rich soil. Keep reading to see where your state’s agriculture industry ranks.
