Seven years of research suggests growers adapt most when groundwater governance is transparent, collaborative and predictable.

Stand in an almond orchard in the Tulare Lake Basin this spring and ask a grower what keeps them up at night. You will hear about groundwater levels, this year’s rapid snowpack melt and the lingering effects of the last drought. But increasingly, the concern is not just water availability. It is uncertainty about the rules themselves.

Will pumping allocations change again next year? Will recharge credits hold their value over time? Will groundwater markets emerge? And will today’s farm plan still make sense in 2040, when an orchard planted this season is still producing?

Uncertainty Drives Long-Term Farm Decisions
For permanent crop agriculture, groundwater uncertainty is not simply stress. It is a capital planning problem. A nut orchard is a 25-year investment made against assumptions about water access, infrastructure, labor and financing. When those assumptions keep shifting, hesitation becomes rational.

That reality sits at the center of a seven-year research effort our team at UC Davis recently published in Environmental Policy and Governance. Beginning in SGMA’s early implementation years, we followed 195 agricultural producers across the Tulare Lake Basin through drought, floods, GSP rollouts, state inadequacy determinations and probationary actions. Previous research led us to initially expect drought experience, climate concerns or attitudes toward regulation to drive adaptation decisions. Instead, the strongest pattern across seven years was much simpler: Growers who viewed the groundwater system as fair, workable and responsive were consistently more willing to stay engaged and invest in long-term adaptation.

Farm size also shaped how growers experienced SGMA. Larger operations often had more capacity to absorb regulatory shifts or dedicate staff to lengthy GSA meetings. But across operation sizes, the pattern remained consistent: Growers who viewed the process as credible and workable were more likely to stay engaged in adaptation efforts over time.

That finding matters because it reframes one of the central assumptions surrounding SGMA implementation. Public conversation often treats groundwater sustainability primarily as a hydrologic or technological challenge: build recharge, improve efficiency, transition acreage and modernize infrastructure. Those things matter enormously. But our findings suggest adaptation depends as much on stable rules as it does on hydrology.

Conversely, when implementation was perceived as opaque, rapidly shifting or disconnected from operational realities, many growers hesitated. Several growers described delaying orchard redevelopment, replacement wells or irrigation investments because they could not confidently estimate future groundwater access over the life of those investments.

Why Trust and Predictability Matter Under SGMA
At the same time, groundwater agencies themselves are also operating under enormous uncertainty. Hydrology is changing, recharge infrastructure takes years to build and state oversight continues to evolve. Few GSAs are working with fully mature accounting systems or long-term recharge capacity today. Predictability in this context does not mean growers are asking for fixed allocations forever. They are asking for clearer timelines, more consistent accounting and enough predictability to make long-term investment decisions.

None of this changes the difficult realities facing overdrafted basins. The Tulare Lake Basin still faces unavoidable pumping reductions, difficult land transitions and pressure on communities that depend on the same aquifers for drinking water. But our findings point to something highly practical: Even where reductions were unavoidable, producers remained more willing to invest and adapt when the process itself was perceived as credible and predictable. That distinction is critical for SGMA’s next phase.

SGMA’s Success Depends on More Than Water Reductions
Some agencies in the San Joaquin Valley are already experimenting with approaches that move in this direction. Westlands and Arvin-Edison have compensated growers for on-farm recharge using surplus surface water. Madera County tested a groundwater market simulation with growers before implementing a real system. In Pixley, multibenefit land repurposing efforts are exploring coordinated recharge and habitat projects on marginal land. Different approaches, same principle: Growers are more likely to adapt when they are treated as long-term partners rather than short-term compliance targets.

The broader lesson is straightforward: Trust in the process is not secondary to groundwater management. It shapes whether growers are willing to make the long-term investments adaptation requires.

Growers are more likely to adapt when they are treated as long-term partners rather than short-term compliance targets.”

What Growers Need From the Next Phase of SGMA
For GSAs and state agencies, investments in collaborative governance are not administrative luxuries. Growers make long-term investments when they know how decisions will be made, when rules may change and how water accounting will be handled over time. Multi-year allocation and accounting frameworks, even if periodically adjusted, would give producers a clearer planning horizon for major capital decisions.

For legislators considering future groundwater funding, incentive-based programs designed with local participation deserve serious attention. State accountability remains essential, but implementation tools are often most durable when they are developed with local operational realities and stakeholder participation in mind.

And for growers themselves, engagement still matters, even in an imperfect process. Across seven years, producers who consistently participated in GSA meetings, advisory groups and planning discussions often described a different relationship with SGMA than those who disengaged entirely. That does not mean growers bear responsibility for fixing institutions they did not design. Trust grows when producers see agencies listening, responding and maintaining consistent rules over time.

The producers who opened their gates to us over seven years were not asking for the absence of regulation. They were asking for regulations they could plan around: rules that respected operational realities, rewarded outcomes and allowed long-term investment decisions to be made with confidence.

California agriculture has shown it can adapt to difficult rules, reduced pumping and changing hydrology. What becomes much harder is asking growers to make 25-year investments when the rules governing groundwater still feel unsettled. SGMA’s long-term success may depend not only on how much water is reduced, but on whether growers believe the system is stable enough to plan around.

M. Anne Visser, Ph.D., is a professor of community and regional development in the College of Agriculture at UC Davis. Her research examines how economic change, automation and AI are reshaping agricultural work and regional economies. She co-directs UC’s Labor and Automation in California Agriculture Multi-Campus Research Initiative and serves on the USDA’s multistate research program on Sustainable and Resilient Systems: Transformative Response to Disruptions by Agricultural Businesses and Communities.

If interested in this study: Visser, M.A., Pantano, J., Kumetat, G., and Marhenke, J. (2026). “When Policy Is the Hazard: Institutional Legitimacy and Climate Risk Attribution Among Farmers in Water-Stressed California.” Environmental Policy and Governance.