On the surface, it has all the makings of a showdown in the rough and tumble Wild West.
Power changes hands, the landscape is transformed and the old economic certainties wither away.
You can't fight it. That would be the Hollywood version, but the French Valley script reads somewhat differently. Instead of forming a lynch mob to run the interlopers out of town, the aggrieved farmers of western Riverside County have cobbled together an ad hoc committee calling itself S.A.F.E., or Save our Area's Farming Environment. In a newspaper ad run last week, the new group urged county residents to join them in a struggle to save farming in Southwest County. No farms equals urban growth, the committee warned.