FOR RETIRING FARMERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

You own farmland but you don't farm it. Could it give someone a start?

Picture a woman in a regional city in South Australia whose uncle left her his block twenty years ago: a few hundred hectares of good country, an old shearing shed and the house he lived in. She isn't a farmer, and she's never pretended to be.

A neighbour leases the paddocks and pays the rates, which is tidy and fine. But every time she drives out, she has the same feeling that this land could be doing more.

What her uncle would have wanted

Her uncle farmed that country his whole life and never had kids. He used to say the hardest thing about farming wasn't the weather, it was getting a start, and that line has stayed with her. She wants the block to give someone the start her uncle had to fight for.

Her worry is simple. She doesn't know farming, so how would she know if a farmer was any good, or if they were looking after the place, and who would she even ask? That's exactly the gap Cultivate Farms fill.

Step one: a sharefarm on the block

Cultivate Farms sit down with her and work out what a good farmer for that country looks like, and then they find a couple who've been managing other people's farms for years and have never had a place of their own. She meets them, likes them and has the final say.

The couple and she sign a share farming agreement, so she keeps the title while they bring the skill, the work and some stock. They move into her uncle's old house, which gets a fresh coat of paint.

Cultivate Farms write the farm plan with her, check the farm against it and report to her every year in plain words. She doesn't have to know farming, she has to know what she wants, and she does.

The seasons that follow

She drives out at shearing and at lambing with a tin of scones, and she starts to recognise the paddocks by name. The couple's first child starts at the local school, which is glad of one more enrolment.

After a few seasons, with her own advisers' work done, her block would move into the Cultivate Trust, which runs it on her behalf, with the right farmer on it. Her gift would go to a charity she chooses, a named fund for aspiring farmers and young people in the district that carries her uncle's name.

The couple would keep farming on the same plan, and could build a stake in the farming business over time. Her uncle's block would be giving someone a start, which is what she wanted.

Could this be you?

You don't need to be a farmer to give land that keeps farming. If you own land you don't farm, start with a sharefarm, see it working and then decide.

The full guide, The Farm That Keeps Giving, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.

You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.

This story is an illustration. It's drawn from situations we see often, and it isn't any one person or family. It's general information, not legal or tax advice.