WHEN Milne AgriGroup (MAG) managing director Graham Laitt delivered the 24th Muresk Lecture last week he revealed that he could well be the accidental entrepreneur.
When he migrated from Britain as a "ten pound Pom" he had no knowledge of, or even interest in, agriculture.
During the massive immigration boom in the wake of World War II, British migrants could travel to Australia for 10 pounds with the only proviso being recipients had to stay in Australia for at least two years.
As a 19-year-old, Mr Laitt decided that he would spend his obligatory two years at university, graduating later with a law degree and obtaining work with what has become Australia's largest law firm.
"I soon had all the trimmings of a successful 1980's lawyer, even mounting a takeover of a local business with the goal of restructuring it and selling it at a profit," he said.
"It was all the rage during those years, so a successful takeover of an old WA business, Peters and Brownes, was mounted, signing off on the deal just as the stock market crashed in 1987.
"The bank told me that unless I was going to run it, they wanted their money back, so I gave up my city job and started in what would become my agribusiness career.
"I became hooked by the challenge of agribusiness, soon discovering that the company had invested heavily in a state-of-the-art ice cream factory, but new markets were needed to make it pay."
Eastern Australia was a hard market to break into, so Mr Laitt decided to export ice cream to Japan, the first Australian company to do so.
He soon ran into issues of scale, with the initial volumes from one contract dramatically exceeding the ability of the WA dairy industry to supply at that time.
"Asia is touted as the market of the future, but there is a challenge being able to meet the demand from any market, well illustrated by the pig industry," Mr Laitt said.
"Because of the urbanisation and pollution problems, China recently shed 30 per cent of its pig herds, but that 30pc is the equivalent of the combined United States and Canadian pig production."
The Peters and Brownes business, which by then had bought Milne Feeds, was eventually sold to Fonterra, with Mr Laitt later buying the Milne business to accompany several farming properties he owned, forming the foundation of what is now the Milne AgriGroup.
The real success of the MAG is not what was owned or how it was acquired, but what was done with these rural assets.
MAG set itself apart with a focus on animal welfare, significant investment in research and development and creative marketing, an approach which revealed that market premiums are not to be gained from commodity products.
Differentiating the products with appropriate branding has allowed the MAG to gain the premiums available for free range products, for as Mr Laitt emphasised, "we must supply what the market wants".
The pig industry and, in particular, the Plantagenet Free Range Pork operation provides a good example of the Laitt thinking, with the product in the early years all coming from MAG-run farms near Mt Barker.
Once established, it became possible to expand sales into the major supermarkets, although Mr Laitt emphasised that the approach must be made on the basis of providing a quality, well-branded product.
Increased supply was sourced from nearby farms, with MAG providing the pigs, feed, supervision and advice, for "we don't need to own the farms, but we do need to control the product".
The Mt Barker Free Range Chicken story is similar, with a focus on animal welfare, quality and some clever marketing driving the business to be the biggest free range chicken operation in WA, but it has the same market focussed attention given to both the product and research.
Today MAG has gone even further down the supply chain with a new facility in Rockingham supplying chicken which is "ready to cook, or even ready to eat".
Mr Laitt revealed that his commitment to free range is not solely based on economics, noting that "research has shown a basic difference in attitude by city and country people".
"Country people tend to think in the long-term, whereas city people are short-term thinkers - these attitudes flow into animal welfare, for country people know that animals are raised for slaughter, while city people tend not to think that far ahead," he said.
"Even so, I believe that even animals bred for slaughter have a right to a pleasant lifestyle, free from unnecessary stress, so much so that we are not involved in any form of intensive farming.
"As the French emphasise in their wine industry, 'provenance' is important, that mix of soils, climate and attitude applies to chickens and pigs, as well as grapes."
In a broader sense, Mr Laitt noted that farming, like most enterprises, is subject to a version of the 80/20 rule, where 80pc of the profit ends up with 20pc of the producers.
"Many farmers fail to earn a sufficient return on their invested capital, relying on capital growth to provide a long-term return, an attitude that assumes that inflation will continue, a concept that not all experts support," he said.
Although not a fan of a co-operative business model, co-operation between farmers is a positive way to achieve the scale needed to service many emerging markets.
"What we strive for is a co-operative approach that is sustainable for farmers and communities, as distinct from, say, scaling up an individual broadacre farm," Mr Laitt said.
"We seek to build scale by co-ordinating and managing many smaller but economic farming units throughout the Great Southern."
Up to 24 farms supply Mt Barker Free Range Chicken and Plantagenet Free Range Pork, and there are likely to be opportunities for many more farms to get involved.
Chinese demand could eventually see more pigs than sheep in the south west of WA.
But Mr Laitt did issue a warning, declaring that "free range is easy to claim, but hard to achieve".
Using a fruit tree as a metaphor for agriculture, he emphasised that "we can eat the fruit, but we must preserve the tree, producing sustainably in terms of animal welfare, environmental management and maintaining vibrant rural communities".