UNLESS you are fortunate enough to inherit a farm or have significant capital backing, starting out as a farmer is an incredibly difficult task nowadays.
As land prices have appreciated at record high rates and the cost of machinery and inputs have continued to grow, arguably the mountain to climb for budding farmers has never been so steep.
Cultivate Farms is a social enterprise that works to make that mountain climb more accessible for aspiring farmers and its next program is taking applications, which close on Saturday, January 30, 2021.
Run by Cultivate Farms, the Cultivator program matches eager aspiring farmers with investors.
Through the program farmers are mentored and given training to help them write a pitch.
Cultivate Farms chief executive officer Sam Marwood said the traditional model of farm transactions is flawed and prices most young farmers out.
"Even I had the mindset that unless you are going to inherit a farm, you will never own a farm because they are too expensive," Mr Marwood said.
"I think that is a stubborn mindset that we want to try to change.
"In a similar sense that you don't become a doctor overnight, you spend many years studying and training, farming should be looked at in a similar way.
"If you want to own a farm and have to start from scratch, it is possible but you have to keep thinking about opening doors.
"Inheriting a farm is a great thing but it doesn't happen for everyone."
With the Cultivator program, farmers call the shots and decide on the level or amount of investment they would like from investors.
"The ball is in the aspiring farmers' court," Mr Marwood said.
"If they think they are good enough, they should write out what a farm investment for a farming property looks like, how much they can make and what they think a win-win partnership would be with someone who would invest alongside them.
"We want to empower aspiring farmers and I think that's a key point that we are really proud of - we are not here to tell farmers what to do, we want the farmers to say what they want to do.
"Then we put that out to investors and if the investor doesn't like it, the farmers move on - it's about finding the right people that you'll get along with and align with."
The investors are all Australian and are generally 'mum and dad' type investors.
Mr Marwood said the idea of investing in agriculture and supporting keen farmers appeals to the investors and that about 50 per cent have a background in agriculture.
"We know there are people out there with money and love the idea of farming but never knew they could back a farmer before," he said.
Retired farmers also make up a significant portion of the investor pool, as well as others who would like to invest in farmers who seek to look after the land while producing food and fibre.
Some investors have family heritage in agriculture but have lost it and love the idea of re-creating it themselves, which is similar to how Cultivate Farms came about.
"Cultivate Farms came about from my own dreams," Mr Marwood said.
"I grew up on a farm and my parents always knew they would sell it - that was their exit plan.
"So when I asked dad if I could carry on the farm, he told me of their plan and I knew I wouldn't own a farm.
"I was about eight-years-old then."
So Mr Marwood made other plans and then when in his early 30s, he caught up with co-founders Tim and Tegan Hicks.
"Tim was talking about how he wanted to own his own farm and he had a similar story to mine and we brainstormed on how a company could help young aspiring farmers achieve farm ownership."
The first Cultivator program launched in 2017 and this upcoming one will be the fourth.
Since 2017, more investors have come on board and the program has been fine-tuned to be rolled out more quickly and efficiently.
It involves about 10 weeks of two-hour weekly Zoom sessions on a different topic, based on Cultivate Farms' pitching template (available to download for free on its website), with each chapter covering a different topic on the business, farming operation, land, themselves as farmers and why someone would want to invest in them.
Experts from various fields and previous farmers who have gone through the process speak during the sessions.
"We guide them through the process, but a lot if it is just to get words out about them and having regular catch ups and speaking with experts and others who have done this before is a lot of what we are doing, as well as inspiring them to keep writing their pitch and clarify what they really want from investors - giving them ideas, how the farming arrangement could work etc," Mr Marwood said.
"Most of the time our aspiring farmers already know what they want, they just need that support to get it on paper."
The top 10 farmers - based on Cultivate Farms' assessment on viability and what the network of investors and farmers are seeking - will be selected to pitch to a panel of more than 20 investors in April 2021.
"Farmers have to show they can make money, farm sustainably and we have to feel like the farmers are motivated and want to be at this for the long haul," he said.
"It's about trying to make sure that the farmers who are put in front of the investors have the best chance of meeting investors' requirements and achieving a match."
He said the aim of the program is for farmers to buy investors out in about 10 years.
Currently 105 aspiring WA farmers are signed up to Cultivate Farms, including Andy and Kathrin Benton, Walpole, who undertook the Cultivator program in its early days.
Mr Benton was born and raised on a farm in Victoria, but a succession breakdown of his family property left him with a yearn to farm his own land.
Originally from Germany, Ms Benton worked on farms as she backpacked around Australia, which coincided with meeting her husband.
The couple have spent most of their adult life living and working on the land, mainly livestock properties and occasionally managing some.
"The yearning to farm has stuck with us both, no matter where we have been and we have inherently always managed our 'land' like a farm, whether it be a backyard or a horse agistment property," Mr Benton said.
For the Bentons, one of the main barriers preventing them from achieving farm ownership is finance.
"The requirement to finance a farm purchase is so prohibitive that most people are excluded from buying into farming, despite being able to finance a similar value residential property," he said.
Mr Benton said budding farmers were usually left with few options and most of those options were very unreliable or highly competitive.
"The need to provide at least a 40pc deposit for the land, before even thinking about financing the onfarm operation, reduces most options down to a very small property," he said.
"This leads to needing to have off-farm income and therefore off-farm focus and relegates the operation to an expensive hobby farm or side gig."
The Cultivator changed the game for the Bentons.
While Mr Benton found the program to be hard work and time consuming, "if it leads us to our farm, it'll be worth it".
"We have used some of the things learnt in the Cultivator program to field some enquiries from retiring/investing farmers and put to them our ideas for an agreement and farm model," he said.
For the Bentons, the ideal farm would be located somewhere with low humidity and historically would be a regenerative operation based loosely around livestock.
"That is not to say we wouldn't start on a conventional operation, more that we would trend towards regenerative agriculture regardless," Mr Benton said.
"Both of us strongly believe in healthy food being delivered to people's plates without the health of the landscape suffering or vice versa.
"What mix of enterprises end up on a farm relates more to the land's needs than our own preferences."
