Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

In vino veritas, in aqua lucrum: Farmland investment, environmental uncertainty, and groundwater access in California’s Cuyama Valley

  • Symposium/Special Issue
  • Published:
Agriculture and Human Values Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between farmland investment and environmental uncertainty. It examines how farmland investors seek to “render land investible” (Li, Trans Inst Br Geographers 39:589–602, 2014) in spite of drought, groundwater depletion, and changing regulations. To do so, we analyze a single case study: the purchase of 8000 acres of dry rangeland in California’s Cuyama Valley by the Harvard University endowment for use in creating an irrigated vineyard. Drawing from interviews with Cuyama Valley farmers and community members, participant observation at community meetings, and public document analysis, we make two primary contributions to understandings of uncertain resource materiality in farmland investment. First, this case reveals that investors can turn environmental uncertainty into an advantage, exploiting both the temporal uncertainties associated with resource management under climate change and the spatial uncertainties inherent to all subsurface resources. We argue that the material and legal uncertainties of groundwater access provide investors with a potentially lucrative opening to assert their preferred land imaginaries and improve their property values. In the Cuyama Valley they did so through both participation in groundwater governance and the establishment of water-related infrastructure on their property. Second, this case highlights that the asset-making processes involved in farmland investment may be as much vertical as they are horizontal. The need to map and measure the uncertain vertical dimension of land creates an outsized role for scientific expertise in farmland assetization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Risk and uncertainty are related but not identical concepts. Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes distinguished between risk, which refers to situations where it is possible to estimate probabilities of different future outcomes, and uncertainty, which refers to truly unpredictable future scenarios (Froud 2003).

  2. Other crops grown on the valley’s eastern end include barley, wheat, onions, garlic, potatoes, alfalfa, as well as an assortment of permanent crops: pistachios, olives, grapes, and apples. Other major growers in the area include Duncan Family Farms, Santa Barbara Pistachio Company, Cuyama Orchards and Sunridge Nurseries.

  3. Groundwater basin boundaries used by SGMA are laid out in DWR Bulletin 118 (DWR 2019). Of the state’s 515 water basins, 127 were designated high or medium priority. Of the high priority basins, 21 were deemed “critically overdrafted.”.

  4. Strike-slip faults occur when two pieces of the Earth’s crust slide past each other horizontally, while normal faults occur when they pull apart.

  5. Alatout (2009) argues that, while scarcity narratives tend to receive more scholarly attention, resource abundance can play an equally pivotal role in environmental politics.

  6. This was not a particularly unusual moment. At a GSA board meeting we attended on December 3, 2018, one of the presenting environmental consultants stated explicitly to the board: “My job as a technical person is to bring you choices that we can defend in front of the state. What you choose within that is entirely up to you and I’m very purposefully trying not to advocate very hard one way or the other. So, if you think it's important to lower this [proposed threshold] a certain amount, I think that is plausible and it's not my decision.” For much of the GSA process, hydrogeological models simply set the outer bounds for what were essentially political decisions made by a board dominated by representatives of large growers and landowners from the local water district.

  7. The opposition made other arguments as well. They rejected the biological surveys conducted by Grapevine Capital Partners, which were done at the height of the drought and after the property had already been disked for cultivation. They also amplified concerns expressed by the California Department of Transportation that the reservoirs could pose a flood risk to Route 166 (Chytilo 2019, Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors 2019).

References

  • Alatout, S. 2009. Bringing abundance into environmental politics: Constructing a Zionist network of water abundance, immigration, and colonization. Social Studies of Science 39 (3): 363–394.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ASFMRA (American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers). 2018. Trends in agricultural land and lease values: California and Nevada. https://www.calasfmra.com/db_trends/Trends2018_Ebook.pdf. Accessed June 24, 2020.

  • Bakker, K., and G. Bridge. 2006. Material worlds? Resource geographies and the ‘matter of nature’. Progress in Human Geography 30 (1): 5–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bebbington, A., and J. Bury. 2009. Institutional challenges for mining and sustainability in Peru. PNAS 106 (41): 17296–17301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beckert, J. 2016. Imagined futures: Fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Birkenholtz, T. 2008. Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices. Geoforum 39 (1): 466–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Braun, B. 2000. Producing vertical territory: Geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada. Ecumene 7 (1): 7–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brodiaea, Inc. 2018. Final mitigated negative declaration: North Fork Ranch frost ponds. August 1, 2018. https://cosantabarbara.app.box.com/s/q97rv82305oyfnbdjhcyxrrdhu3dgkqy/file/392545753182. Accessed 10 July 2019.

  • Budds, J. 2009. Contested H20: Science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile. Geoforum 40 (3): 418–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burawoy, M. 1998. The extended case method. Sociological Theory 16 (1): 4–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • CBGSA (Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency). 2018a. Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency Board of Directors meeting. May 2, 2018. Meeting minutes. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/2018-05-02-CBGSA-Board-Minutes.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2020.

  • CBGSA (Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency). 2018b. Joint meeting of Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency Board of Directors and Standing Advisory Committee. December 3, 2018. Agenda and packet. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/2018-12-03-CBGSA-Board-Packet-rev1.pdf. Accessed 5 July 2019.

  • CBGSA (Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency). 2018c. Special joint meeting of Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency Board of Directors and Standing Advisory Committee. December 18, 2018. Agenda and packet. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/2018-12-18-Special-Joint-Board-Packet.pdf. Accessed 5 July 2019.

  • CBGSA (Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency). 2018d. Special joint meeting of Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency Board of Directors and Standing Advisory Committee. December 18, 2018. Meeting minutes. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/2018-12-18-CBGSA-Special-Minutes-final.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2020.

  • CBGSA (Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency). 2019. Groundwater Sustainability Plan. December, 2019. Prepared by Woodard and Curran. https://cuyamabasin.org/resources#final-gsp. Accessed 23 June 2020.

  • Christophers, B. 2018. Risking value theory in the political economy of finance and nature. Progress in Human Geography 42 (3): 330–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chytilo, M. 2019. Re: Harvard appeal of the planning commission’s action requiring a focused environmental impact report for the North Fork Ranch frost ponds project. Letter and exhibits sent to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. February 1, 2019. https://santabarbara.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=7063202&GUID=01060A39-E7AB-4FB8-9174-8F8FB14BF8E1. Accessed 12 July 2019.

  • Clapp, J., and R. Isakson. 2018. Speculative harvests: Financialization, food, and agriculture. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cleath-Harris Geologists. 2018. Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin (3–13) boundary modification request: Technical memorandum. Report prepared for Grapevine Capital Management. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/Russell-Fault-BBMR-Report-Final.pdf. Accessed 26 June 2019.

  • Demeritt, D. 2001. Scientific forest conservation and the statistical picturing of nature’s limits in the Progressive-era United States. Environment and Planning D 19: 431–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diffenbaugh, N., D. Swain, and D. Touma. 2015. Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California. PNAS 112 (13): 3931–3936.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ducastel, A., and W. Anseeuw. 2017. Agriculture as an asset class: Reshaping the South African farming sector. Agriculture and Human Values 34 (2017): 199–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DWR (Department of Water Resources). 2019. Bulletin 118. https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/Bulletin-118. Accessed 25 March 2019.

  • EKI. 2017. Preliminary findings from review of the USGS study of the Cuyama Valley groundwater basin. EKI B70069.00. Prepared for Cuyama Basin Water District. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/EKI-Review_of_USGS_Study_2017-10-27_final.pdf. Accessed 23 June 2020.

  • Everett, R., D. Gibbs, R. Hanson, D. Sweetkind, J. Brandt, S. Falk, and C. Harich. 2013. Geology, water-quality, hydrology, and geomechanics of the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin, California, 2008–12. U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5108. https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5108/pdf/sir2013-5108.pdf. Accessed 26 June 2019.

  • Fairbairn, M. 2014. ‘Like gold with yield’: Evolving intersections between farmland and finance. Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (5): 777–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fairbairn, M. 2020. Fields of gold: Financing the global land rush. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fritz, M. 2014. Harvard pushing further into farm sector with California Central Coast vineyard play. March 14, 2014. Farmland Investor Center. https://www.farmlandinvestorcenter.com/?p=722&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=171. Accessed 5 June 2019.

  • Froud, J. 2003. The private finance initiative: Risk, uncertainty and the state. Accounting, Organizations and Society 28: 567–589.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gold, R. 2018. Harvard quietly amasses California vineyards—and the water underneath. Wall Street Journal. December 10. https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-quietly-amasses-california-vineyardsand-the-water-underneath-1544456396. Accessed 6 June 2019.

  • Grapevine Capital Partners. 2018. Cuyama Basin—North Fork Vineyard: Company background plus data insights to support GSP development for the Cuyama Basin. Presentation to the Cuyama Basin GSA, April 26, 2018. https://cuyamabasin.org/assets/pdf/2018-04-26-Cuyama_NorthForkVineyard.pdf. Accessed 27 June 2019.

  • Gunnoe, A. 2014. The political economy of institutional landownership: Neorentier society and the financialization of land. Rural Sociology 79 (4): 478–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, D., P. Hirsch, and T. Li. 2011. Powers of exclusion: Land dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, R., and D. Sweetkind. 2014. Cuyama Valley, California hydrologic study: An assessment of water availability. US Geological Survey Fact Sheet. https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20143075.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, R., L. Flint, C. Faunt, D. Gibbs, and W. Schmid. 2015. Hydrologic models and analysis of water availability in Cuyama Valley, California. US Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2014–5150. Version 1.1, May 2015. https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2014/5150/pdf/sir2014-5150.pdf. Accessed 26 June 2019.

  • Harvey, D. 2001. Globalization and the spatial fix. Geographische Revue 2: 23–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. 2003. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Henderson, G. 1998. California and the fictions of capital. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • HMC (Harvard Management Company). 2019. Investing for the long-term. https://www.hmc.harvard.edu/sustainable-investing/. Accessed 16 March 2020.

  • Holifield, R. 2009. How to speak for aquifers and people at the same time: Environmental justice and counter-network formation at a hazardous waste site. Geoforum 40: 363–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isakson, R. 2015. Derivatives for development? Small-farmer vulnerability and the financialization of climate risk management. Journal of Agrarian Change 15 (4): 569–580.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaffe, R. et al. 2016. Re: Opposition to 3–13 Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin boundary change proposal. Letter dated April 28, 2016.

  • Johnson, L. 2014. Geographies of securitized catastrophe risk and the implications of climate change. Economic Geography 90 (2): 155–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, D. 2020. Water scarcity presents risk for investors, but opportunity too. Agri Investor. February 5, 2020. https://www.agriinvestor.com/water-scarcity-presents-risk-for-investors-but-opportunity-too/

  • Kinchy, A., R. Phadke, and J. Smith. 2018. Engaging the underground: An STS field in formation. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 4: 22–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kish, Z., and M. Fairbairn. 2018. Investing for profit, investing for impact: Moral performances in agricultural investment projects. Environment and Planning A 50 (3): 569–588.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kroepsch, A. 2018. Groundwater modeling and governance: Contesting and building (sub)surface worlds in Colorado’s Northern San Juan Basin. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 4: 43–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuns, B., O. Visser, and A. Wastfelt. 2016. The stock market and the steppe: The challenges faced by stock-market financed, Nordic farming ventures in Russia and Ukraine. Journal of Rural Studies 45: 199–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, T. 2014. What is land? Assembling a resource for global investment. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39 (4): 589–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Magnan, A. 2015. The financialization of agri-food in Canada and Australia: Corporate farmland and farm ownership in the grains and oilseed sector. Journal of Rural Studies 41: 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDonald, M. 2018. Harvard spent $100 million on vineyards. Now it’s fighting with the neighbors. Bloomberg. November 15, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/harvard-spent-100-million-on-vineyards-some-neighbors-complain. Accessed 16 March 2020.

  • Nuveen. 2018. Nuveen knows responsible investing. https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/addressing_the_climate_change.pdf. Accessed 8 Feb 2020.

  • Ouma, S. 2016. From financialization to operations of capital: Historicizing and disentangling the finance-farmland-nexus. Geoforum 72: 82–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ouma, S. 2020. This can(’t) be an asset class: The world of money management, ‘society’, and the contested morality of farmland investments. Environment and Planning A 52 (1): 66–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, T., and G. Weszkalnys. 2014. Introduction: Resource materialities. Anthropological Quarterly 87 (1): 5–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors. 2019. Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors meeting of February 5, 2019. https://sbcounty.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=3&clip_id=3475&meta_id=392601. Accessed 24 June 2020.

  • Santa Barbara County Water Agency. 2016. Santa Barbara County Water Agency - 3-013 CUYAMA VALLEY. California DWR SGMA Portal – Basin Boundary Modification Request System. https://sgma.water.ca.gov/basinmod/basinrequest/preview/31. Accessed 15 Oct 2020.

  • Santa Barbara Planning Commission. 2018. Santa Barbara Planning Commission meeting of September 12, 2018. https://sbcounty.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=11&clip_id=3369. Accessed 24 June 2020.

  • Scott, J. 1998. Seeing like a state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sippel, S.R. 2018. Financialising farming as a moral imperative? Renegotiating the legitimacy of land investments in Australia. Environment and Planning A 50 (3): 549–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sippel, S.R., N. Larder, and G. Lawrence. 2016. Grounding the financialization of farmland: Perspectives on financial actors as new land owners in rural Australia. Agriculture and Human Values 34: 251–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsing, A. 2000. Inside the economy of appearances. Public Culture 12 (1): 115–144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Census. 2018. 2018 American Communities Survey 5-year estimates. https://www.census.gov/data.html. Accessed 22 June 2020.

  • Visser, O. 2017. Running out of farmland? Investment discourses, unstable land values and the sluggishness of asset making. Agriculture and Human Values 34: 185–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walsh, C. 2019. Water to wine: Industrial agriculture and groundwater regulation in California. In In defense of farmers: The future of agriculture in the shadow of corporate power, ed. Jane W. Gibson and Sara E. Alexander, 175–204. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zaloom, C. 2004. The productive life of risk. Cultural Anthropology 19 (3): 365–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), grant number 2017-68006-26347. We are indebted to the many people who provided formative feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, including: Flora Lu and the rest of her brilliant lab group, Katharine Legun, Zenia Kish, Julie Keller, Lindsey Dillon, Amanda Smith, Renee Fox, and Alma Heckman. We also thank the special issue editors, Sarah Sippel and Oane Visser, for an incredibly helpful round of internal reviews and for being the most organized special issue editors we have ever encountered. Finally, we are deeply indebted to the Cuyama Valley residents who housed us, fed us, and generously shared their wealth of knowledge about the valley and its water politics.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

    Madeleine Fairbairn

  2. Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

    Jim LaChance & Kathryn Teigen De Master

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA

    Loka Ashwood

Authors
  1. Madeleine Fairbairn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jim LaChance
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kathryn Teigen De Master
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Loka Ashwood
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Madeleine Fairbairn.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fairbairn, M., LaChance, J., De Master, K.T. et al. In vino veritas, in aqua lucrum: Farmland investment, environmental uncertainty, and groundwater access in California’s Cuyama Valley. Agric Hum Values 38, 285–299 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10157-y

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10157-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation