Meet the founder

Sam Marwood

Founder, Cultivate Farms

I was eight years old, sitting on the fence of our dairy at Dingee, watching my dad milk. I asked him when I'd get the farm. He laughed. Told me they were selling up. Right there, my farming dream died. Nine years later, we did sell, and I moved to Bendigo. Spent twelve years in government environmental policy instead, trying to do good for land I'd never own.

At thirty three, a mate asked me a question. What if there was a business that helped young people buy farms? I quit my job. Moved in with my parents in law. Spent five years finding the answer, because we needed it ourselves.

That answer became six guides, given away free, everything we learned laid out so anyone can use it. It became the Cultivate Trust, a real way for a farm to change hands without losing what it means. It became solutions I kept building because the old ones weren't good enough. And now I'm putting my own money where my mouth is, buying into real farms myself, the same way I'm asking everyone else to.

We didn't invent this. Stephen Fisher did, at Circular Head Farming in Tasmania, one dairy farm in 2014, twelve farms today, over 9,000 cows, a young family on every one, forty to fifty million raised from people who believed in it. He proved it works. We're doing it everywhere else.

Farms in local hands. That's the whole reason I'm still doing this.

How Cultivate Farms works

Four groups come to us. Aspiring farmers, hungry enough to hustle and put their own money in, who need the credibility and the structure to turn that hustle into a real farm. Retiring farmers, who want their life's work kept farmed, in hands they trust. Families working through the hardest conversation in farming together. And communities and regional bodies who want their young people staying, ready to back someone who'll make that happen.

Cultivate Farms is the credibility layer that turns an ageing farmer's willingness to let go, and a young farmer's hustle, into a farm that stays farmed, by someone local who'll work it and stay.

We give away as much as we can. Keeping farms in local hands is a hard problem, and we've spent ten years and our own money working it out. Everything we've learned is yours, free: the planning, the guides, the conversation.

We've also put years into building the most human-centred, practical planning guide we could. Ten years of watching and learning told us most people get stuck before they even start: too many barriers, too little time, no obvious place to begin. So we built this: the best solution we could think of. A real conversation about your situation, and a comprehensive plan you can act on. The point is to smash down the barriers and get you moving, fast.

We sustain the work through four things.

Your farm, in good hands

Your farm farmed well while you keep it. We find the right next generation farmer, set up the arrangement that fits, whether sharefarming, a lease or another way, and oversee it year after year, for one farm or a district's farms worked together.

Cultivate Trust

A way for a farm to stay whole, farmed and in local hands. Your farm moves into the Trust, which runs it on your behalf, with the right farmer on it.

Advisory

Once a farm is in the system, our team walks alongside it. Tim Pilkington leads farming operations, agronomy and financial advice; Sam Marwood handles succession, partnership and trust design.