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<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>James G. Boswell II dies at 86;
cotton magnate built family farm into agribusiness giant<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>The Los Angeles Times – 4/7/09<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>By Jerry Hirsch<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;display:none'><a
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/lat-me-boswell7_hme7jykf20090406163039,0,7149086,email.photo"
target="win_46016738"><span style='color:windowtext'>Email Picture</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;display:none'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;display:none'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt;display:none'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><i><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>Boswell built the state’s first giant agribusiness, and played an
influential role in shaping the state's water and land policies.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>Heralded as 'The King of California,' Boswell at one point oversaw an
empire spanning 200,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley, transforming the
industry and influencing pivotal state water policies.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>James G. Boswell II, the intensely private businessman who transformed
his family's cotton holdings into California's first giant agribusiness and one
of the nation's great farming empires, has died. He was 86.<br>
<br>
Boswell died of natural causes Friday at his home in Indian Wells, Calif.,
according to a statement from the family.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>As head of the family-owned J.G. Boswell Co., Boswell ran a company
that has dominated California cotton growing for generations and has used its
clout to influence land- and water-resource policy throughout much of the
state.<br>
<br>
He was just 29 when he inherited the company following the death of his uncle
J.G. Boswell, the family patriarch. Over the next half-century, he transformed
the business and more than tripled the size of the family farm, which peaked
about 200,000 acres and now spans 150,000 in the San Joaquin Valley town of
Corcoran. Boswell's labs created new, more productive seeds. Technological
improvements to his gins boosted their capacity to 400 bales of cotton a day --
enough to produce 840,000 pairs of boxer shorts, according to a 2003 Times
article.<br>
<br>
Historians and agriculture economists credit Boswell with creating the template
for large agribusiness concerns.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>The Boswell business remains one of the world's top sellers of
"the extra-long staple cotton that goes into fabric blends and both soft
and high-end apparel," said Don Villarejo, director emeritus of the
California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis. <br>
<br>
"His legacy is quite impressive," said Villarejo. "He was a
brilliant business leader beloved by many of his employees. At the same time,
his company was able to be ahead of and often acquire his chief farming
competitors."<br>
<br>
Boswell also was legendary for using a combination of political clout and legal
strategy "to outwit many of the environmental groups that have tried to
restrict water deliveries to California agriculture," Villarejo said. <br>
<br>
He was an innovative water user, one of the first to employ lasers to level
fields so that water flowed evenly and efficiently, said Richard Howitt, an
agriculture economist at UC Davis. <br>
<br>
Careful water management, including employing agronomists to determine when and
how to water, allowed Boswell's farms to produce more cotton with less water
than competitors, Howitt said. Many of his techniques were later adopted by other
farms. <br>
<br>
But even during this period of growth and success for the enterprise, which
included diversification into tomatoes and other crops, real estate development
and farming in distant Australia, Boswell remained an intensely private man at
the head of an intensely private family business.<br>
<br>
A <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2003/oct/27/entertainment/et-arax27"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>rare 1999 interview</span></a>
with two now-former Los Angeles Times writers gave outsiders a sense of
Boswell's character.<br>
<br>
For years staff writer Mark Arax and business editor Rick Wartzman had
attempted to meet the cotton patriarch. But each letter and call was rejected.
The two were writing "The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making
of a Secret American Empire," a book about the family's cotton business,
and they needed to talk to him. Finally he agreed.<br>
<br>
J.G., as Boswell liked to be called, wanted to meet them on his land rather
than in some sterile office. His intent was to show them that the business was
only as good as its earth. <br>
<br>
Boswell, the pair wrote, "wore a Cal Poly Ag hat tucked low, frayed khaki
pants, a flannel shirt and Rockport shoes."<br>
<br>
"It was all part of an image that Boswell loved to play up. He had earned
an economics degree at Stanford and sat on the board of General Electric and
other big corporations, but he fancied himself a cowboy," they wrote in a
2003 Times article. <br>
<br>
Boswell attended the Thacher School, an exclusive private boarding school in
Ojai, graduating in 1941. <br>
<br>
He served in the Army during World War II in the South Pacific before
graduating from Stanford in 1946. That's where he met his first wife, Rosalind
Murray. They raised their three children in Pasadena, far from the farm. She
died in 2000.<br>
<br>
The company remains headquartered in Pasadena. <br>
<br>
Fancying himself a cowboy and living like a city boy, J.G. proved to be a
complex figure. When he reached out to shake the writers' hands, they noticed
the missing fingers on his right hand, the result of a cattle-roping accident. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>They jumped into an aged Chevy truck for a tour of his holdings. The
writers said they traveled half a day and 150 miles but never left the farm.
When they asked Boswell how much land he really owned, he responded, "What
are you, a tax collector?"<br>
<br>
"I'm the bad guy in agriculture because I'm big," he said later.
"I'm not going to try to fight it. I can't change an image and say, 'Well,
I'm righteous and good and all that.' But I'm telling you . . . I'm not going
to apologize for our size."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
14.0pt'>Wartzman, now director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate
University, said he was sad to learn of Boswell's death. <br>
<br>
"He was an immensely complicated guy, someone who knew every inch of his
land but whose company did some pretty awful things to the land," Wartzman
said. "It is just hard to farm in an environmentally sound manner at that
scale."<br>
<br>
The company used its political clout to encourage the building of the Pine Flat
Dam to shut the flow of water to Tulare Lake, which at one point was the
largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. The drained lake bed is
now farmland, located at the heart of Boswell's sprawling enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN style='font-size:14.0pt'>Boswell was born
March 10, 1923, in Greensboro, Ga., the son of William Whittier Boswell Sr. and
Kate Hall Boswell, and moved west with his parents and his uncles.<br>
<br>
He was named after his uncle J.G. Boswell, who married Ruth Chandler, the
daughter of Los Angeles Times Publisher and real estate baron Harry Chandler.<br>
<br>
With no children of his own, J.G. Boswell picked his nephew to take control of
the company he had founded in 1921 with the help of his brothers. <br>
<br>
In the early 1980s, Boswell and the company would spend $1 million to defeat
the Peripheral Canal, a system proposed to move water to Southern California.
He thought it would hurt farming interests. <br>
<br>
During the same period, Boswell helped farmers outflank state and game
regulators and pump water from excessive snowmelt into the north fork of the
Kings River. The move prevented farmland from flooding but also introduced the
nonnative predatory white bass into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. <br>
<br>
At times profane, Boswell liked to be in control. For many years his company
extended its influence throughout the San Joaquin Valley by lending money to
other growers. <br>
<br>
He served as chairman, president and chief executive of the company from 1952
until his retirement in 1984. He remained on the company's board of directors
until his death. His son James W. Boswell now runs the business.<br>
<br>
In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Barbara Wallace Boswell;
daughters Jody Hall and Lorraine Wilcox; and five grandchildren.<br>
<br>
A memorial service is planned for April 22 at 1 p.m. at the Corcoran High
School Memorial Stadium.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
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<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
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<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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