The $1,600 lettuce: California growers warn of ‘master plan’ strangling family farms

In the rugged, salt-sprayed hills of Malibu and the sun-drenched valleys of Moorpark, the Golden State is losing its luster.For nearly 80 years, Larry Thorne’s family has watched the Pacific fog roll over fields that feed the community, but today the view is clouded by a different kind of threat — a triple hit of $7-a-gallon diesel, soaring electricity rates and a regulatory environment so suffocating that local farmers are calling it a "master plan" to run the working class out of the state.As the last farm in a town of million-dollar estates, Thorne faces a breaking point where the region’s...

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