Farm ownership Australia: Corporates lift nation’s ag stocks
A SPECIAL investigation into who really owns Australia’s farms reveals the big are getting bigger — but everyone is benefiting.
THE big are getting bigger — but everyone is benefiting.
That’s the picture of Australia’s farm ownership to emerge from a special investigation by The Weekly Times.
Today we reveal more than 170 farming individuals and corporations that own more than 900 properties across Australia.
Irrigated properties and citrus and almond crops are the hottest tickets in town as corporate heavyweights battle to grab a slice of the growing agriculture export market.
FULL LIST: WHO OWNS AUSTRALIA’S FARMS?
Meanwhile, strong commodity returns are driving renewed interest in pastoral areas, with wool prices and beef exports lifting returns.
Partly Chinese-owned Outback Beef is Australia’s biggest landholder, with its S Kidman and Co properties spanning more than eight million hectares, followed by the listed Australian Agriculture Company (seven million hectares), the North Australian Pastoral Company (6.1 million hectares) and the UK-owned Consolidated Pastoral Company (5.8 million hectares).
Investment companies such as Rural Funds and the US-backed TIA-CREF are also building on their outlays, with portfolios growing to 664,000ha and 235,000ha respectively.
Other major players in prime agriculture include the Qatari-owned Hassad Australia (151,874ha), Macquarie Bank’s Lawsons Grain (86,000ha), and Warakirri Asset Management (80,937ha).
Several newcomers are also beginning to stake a claim.
The AAAW Group — the Australian arm of Chinese retailer Dashang Group — has put together a portfolio of five beef properties and two orchards covering more than 115,000ha over the past three years, while AustOn Corporation, the Australian arm of Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, owns about $400 million in horticultural investments and plans to expand its local agriculture base by another $600 million.
AustOn Corporation chief executive David Goodfellow told The Weekly Times the company’s plan was to “grow out the portfolio” from avocados and almonds, and it was “pretty excited about what the beef industry continues to offer to us as investors in Australian agriculture”.
“I’m pretty optimistic for some changes to occur in that industry moving forward … (particularly) to adopt some of the technologies we’re seeing at play in horticulture today back into the livestock industry over the next few years,” Mr Goodfellow said.
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ANZ agribusiness head Mark Bennett said while investment in Australian agriculture had been focused on “grazing and bigger farm production systems in northern Australia — pretty much cattle”, this was changing.
“There’s big interest in cotton as well because this is another industry that is highly developed, technical, good product and has scale,” he said.
“And now we’re seeing an absolute resurgence in sheep and wool — these are really big opportunities — and horticulture as well.”
CBRE Agribusiness boss Danny Thomas said foreign investment was a major factor in rising land prices.
Latest statistics show 13.6 per cent of Australia’s farmland was held by foreigners at the end of June last year.
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