Buying a farm in your 20s can be perceived as a near impossible dream but Cultivate Farms is working to make this a reality.
The business, founded by Sam Marwood and Tim and Tegan Hicks, aims to match young farming families with investors and retiring farmers to help them own and operate a farm.
Mr Marwood said there was something about farm ownership that wa really exciting to a lot of young people.
“We think we could put farming back up the top of the career option list for anybody, by opening up access to capital from investors,” he said.
He said this option can be a win-win for both sides of the transaction.
“This could be a new succession option for retiring farmers who might not have kids, or who don’t want to pass the farm down,” he said.
It’s an issue that is close to Mr Marwood’s heart, as he grew up on a dairy farm north of Bendigo, and assumed from a young age that he would have this passed down to him.
“I remember at the age of eight, I was walking back from the dairy with Dad, and I looked up and said ‘Dad when do I get the farm?’, and he said ‘you’re not getting the farm, Mum and I are selling it, how else would we retire?’” he said.
“I must have intuitively known that unless you inherit a farm, you’re never going to be able to afford to buy one. From that age I knew I would never be a farmer.”
He said co-founder Tim Hicks had the same dilemma.
“We were just talking about business ideas, and he said ‘all I want is to be a farmer, but I can’t, what if there was some sort of business that bought farms for young people?’” he said.
Mr Marwood will be a panelist at Stock & Land’s New Breed event on Wednesday 24 October, at Marcus Oldham, Geelong, where financial planning is the theme of the evening.
PwC senior consultant Ginny Blair will also be on the panel.
Ms Blair said there were non-traditional ways you can get on the land.
She works in the mergers and acquisitions space, and said the volume of transactions happening in agriculture at the moment had increased.
“There’s a huge amount of money being pointed at Australian agriculture,” she said.
She said this allowed for opportunities for young people who may not be able to afford to buy their own farm.
“There’s a lot of foreign money coming in and a lot of these funds need managers,” she said.
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