Worsening Droughts Drive Premiums for Farmland With Water Access
- Acreage left to fallow as water dries up in key planting areas
- Investors shun some California properties amid megadrought
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Shrinking water supplies are creating a two-tiered market in farmland investing, lifting values for properties with access to groundwater or aquifers.
“We’re ultimately acquiring water first,” said Carter Malloy, founder and chief executive officer of AcreTrader, a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based platform for investing in agricultural land. If the land “happens to have some trees on it growing citrus, that’s great news.”