UC Hansen Center buys new farm property near Camarillo

After 25 years at Faulkner Farm near Santa Paula, the University of California has found a new home for its Ventura County agricultural research center.

In late December, the university closed the purchase of a 114-acre farm property just outside of Camarillo, for $9.3 million. The UC Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center will move there in around six months, a move the center’s director said will allow it to expand its staff, attract visiting researchers and better study strawberries and other crops.

The Hansen Center has been looking for property on the Oxnard Plain for years, since it's more centrally located in the county and its climate and growing conditions are better for the berries and vegetables that make up many of Ventura County's top crops.

In March 2021, UC sold Faulkner Farm to a local family for $3.7 million, and leased back part of the property from the buyer so it could stay there while it shopped for a new home.

“We’ve been searching for a while, and there just wasn’t much for sale, and of course, the value of land here is very high,” said Annemiek Schilder, the director of the Hansen Agricultural Research Center and the UC Cooperative Extension Ventura County. “It was difficult to find anything, so we are very happy with this.”

The university has been paying around $5,000 per month in rent at Faulkner Farm since the sale, according to information provided by the UC Office of the President, and is just starting a six-month lease extension that ends in August. The plan is to move to the new Camarillo-area property when that lease ends, Schilder said.

Land to 'tackle some big problems'

The UC’s new property is on Beardsley Road, northwest of Camarillo and about a mile north of the Central Avenue exit on Highway 101. The seller was Berry Land Management, a company owned by a longtime Ventura County strawberry farming family, the Hasegawas.

Berry Land Management grows strawberries on part of the property, and, until the sale, leased the rest to other growers, said Glen Hasegawa, a co-owner of the company. Since the sale closed, Berry Land Management and the other growers have been leasing land from the university.

The UC will continue to rent most of the property to growers even after it moves to the site, since the Hansen Center will only use about 27 of the 104 farmable acres at first. It will grow into the full property gradually, Schilder said, and will plant orchards on some of the land.

When the center moves to its new home in August, it will move its modular buildings and farm equipment from Faulkner Farm. The plan is to build permanent structures in four or five years, Schilder said, though the program will need to raise the money for that.

Once the permanent buildings are up, the UC Cooperative Extension Office will also move to the site, Schilder said. The Cooperative Extension currently operates out of a county building in Ventura. It has researchers and advisers who work with local farmers and also runs the county’s 4H and Master Gardener programs.

The new Hansen Center will also have "dormitory-style" accommodations for graduate students and visiting researchers, Schilder said.

The entire research operation will expand, featuring more collaborations with agricultural scientists from UC Davis, UC Riverside and other campuses. Researchers at the new Hansen farm will study new varieties of strawberries and other crops, irrigation methods that use less water, non-pesticide alternatives to soil fumigation, using beneficial insects for pest control, and the science of wildfires.

"We are looking to tackle some big problems," Schilder said.

The new location will also allow the UC to beef up its partnership with CSU Channel Islands, she said, since it's much closer to the Camarillo-area CSU campus. CSUCI is currently developing a degree program in sustainable agriculture, and Schilder said the new Hansen Center farm will be an important venue for fieldwork in that program.

Fixtures of Ventura County ag

The UC Hansen Center and Cooperative Extension now employs 20 workers, including five at Faulkner Farm. The annual budget for the most recent fiscal year was about $4.3 million. The UC provided 48% of the funding, the endowment established by the Hansen family accounted for 36%, the County of Ventura chipped in 9% and the remaining 7% was gifts, grants and other sources.

Thelma Hansen, a descendent of a pioneering Ventura County farming family, donated most of her estate to the university when she died in 1993, establishing the Hansen Center's endowment. The UC used some of the funds to buy Faulkner Farm in 1997.

The sellers of the new property, the Hasegawas, are also fixtures of the Ventura County ag industry, with more than 50 years growing strawberries on the Oxnard Plain. The Hasegawas and their company, Berry Land Management, aren't going anywhere and will continue to farm on their other properties after leaving Beardsley Road, Glen Hasegawa said.

The Beardsley Road property is known as the Mohseni Ranch, after the grower who sold it to the Hasegawas. In the 1990s, the CSU system considered buying it from the Mohsenis, before settling on the former state hospital property south of Camarillo that became the CSUCI campus.

Glen Hasegawa said his company was considering selling property a few years ago when a researcher he's friends with told him the UC was looking for a home on the Oxnard Plain.

"It's a little different customer. Usually when ag land changes hands, it's another grower," Hasegawa said. "I've done some projects with the university, so it's great to have them be the purchasers. It'll be good to do some worthwhile projects on that land."

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: UC Hansen Center buys new farm property near Camarillo