Scholarship helps student to become first generation grain farmer

INDUSTRY support has put this 21-year-old on track to become a first generation farmer. CAMILLE SMITH reports.

Grain trust: Marcus Oldham student Sam Hotchin is on a Lawson Grains scholarship to the college. Picture: Andy Rogers

SAM Hotchin plans to own and operate his own farm one day.

The 21-year-old Marcus Oldham student is well on his way, with two years of industry experience under his belt and a lucrative scholarship from Australian corporate cropping business Lawson Grains, which will support him through his agriculture degree.

However, Sam never pictured himself in a farming career until a work experience stint in construction gave him a dose of reality.

“They didn’t have enough work for me in that week,” says Sam, who was in Year 10 at Ballarat Grammar at the time and thought he wanted to go into the building trade.

Left in the lurch with no spot on a construction site, but keen to keep busy, Sam volunteered on a friend’s cattle property at Mortlake, near Warrnambool, where they rear heifers for the southwest dairy industry.

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“I just loved it,” Sam says.

“I really enjoyed the cattle side of things. And then I bought some cattle after that to put on the little block that we had and started growing them out for beef.”

He hasn’t looked back since.

Growing up on a 10-hectare property in the Ballarat suburb Miners Rest, Sam’s week with his friends’ heifers was his first taste of the ag industry.

Eventually he had the chance to complete work experience on a Melbourne building site and says he “didn’t like it at all”, which cemented his decision to pursue farming.

The then 15-year-old jumped into agriculture studies at Ballarat Grammar, where the Year 11 and 12 curriculum encouraged him to develop his business skills.

“It was handy that they had that (agriculture) subject in Year 12,” Sam says. “It meant I could run my own small business — that was part of your main assessment.”

At the end of secondary school, Sam broadened his horizons by gaining more on-farm experience at a sheep and cropping property south of Ballarat while saving funds to enrol in a tertiary degree.

He thought higher education would be necessary to help him achieve the goal of owning his own business.

“Driving tractors and stuff like that, I’ve got that down pat. But learning how to manage a business financially … as much as it’s not as fun, you still need it,” he says.

“I went to the career expo days at school, and looked at all the different colleges and Marcus Oldham stuck out to me because of the middle year that you go on a farm placement.”

Sam’s tenacity and drive caught the eye of Lawson Grains farm manager Nick Ennis, who is part of the selection committee for the company’s new scholarship to Marcus Oldham.

“He has a target of where he wants to go. He is open to gaining lots of different experience,” Nick says.

“The thing that really stood out was when he was a young fellow, still at school, he would get up on Sunday mornings and work at a fruit wholesaler. Then after school every day milk cows.

“He had one purpose in doing that, which was to get enough money together to go to Marcus Oldham. I was so terribly impressed with his drive to get to where he is.”

Not having grown up on a farm, Sam opted for two years of agriculture work before attending Marcus.

Starting a three-year degree “without the practical hands-on experience” was not appealing because Sam says he “would just have the piece of paper”, but no working skills.

Marcus Oldham requires students to spend at least one year working in industry before starting a degree.

The Geelong institution offers Bachelor degrees in agriculture, agribusiness and equine management.

Lawson Grains is one of 30 companies, philanthropic organisations and individuals within the agriculture and equine industries that support Marcus Oldham students with more than $300,000 in scholarships.

As part of the scholarship, Sam will receive $10,000 toward his study fees in his first year, an on-farm placement with Lawson Grains during his second year, and $5000 in his third year.

“It is something we have been looking at for a number of years,” Lawson Grains Nick Ennis says, “we want to support good young people into the ag industry and to give them an opportunity to go through university studying agriculture.

“We selected Marcus Oldham because we thought it was an excellent university with broad reaching demographic.”

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Founded in 2012, Lawson Grains owns and operates more than 100,000 hectares of cropping properties across Western Australia and NSW.

The company has ramped up its investment in education, supporting one Marcus Oldham student a year with a scholarship package worth $15,000 over their three years of study.

“We’re really keen to access bright minds and people with proven skills that we can then foster and develop in corporate agriculture,” says Nick Ennis, who manages the company’s Borambil operation at Balldale, southern NSW.

Even though Sam may not end up in the cropping sector, Nick says Lawson Grains is enthusiastic about contributing to Sam’s future, due to his passion for the industry.

“We’re really keen to support Australian agriculture,” Nick says. “Having an opportunity to have someone in the team for their industry placement, in the second year like Sam … could potentially bring something new to the table that we haven’t thought about.”

Lawson Grains also rolled out a two-year graduate program this year, which offers experience across four properties in NSW and Western Australia, plus time in the company’s Albury office.

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