Recent Posts

Cultivate Round Up June 2023

Welcome to our redesigned our website, changed with the aim of increasing its use to our members and supporters. The website is easy to navigate, provides relevant information and will support your farm ownership journey, from acquisition to succession. More and more function will be added to our website over the coming months, so keep dropping back and exploring our site, and keep up to date with changes via our socials and newsletter. 

Over the next few months, you’ll see some updates to our socials aimed at cultivating a stronger sense of community and peer learning in the groups, and ensuring that Cultivate Farms continues to provide related information to your farm ownership journey. 

As your new CEO, I want to be sure that our members and our community are getting value from every action that we take. Feel free to pass on your feedback to any changes to info@cultivatefarms.com

In the news 

We hope that everyone had a chance to read the fantastic article that was published by The Age in February. It’s worthwhile revisiting, as it gets to the heart of what Cultivate Farms is all about – connecting older and young farmers.  

Our friends at Graziher Magazine have written a lovely article for Cultivate Farms. It will be published in the next edition of Graziher released early June 2023. Graziher is a great magazine to have on hand for winter afternoons by the fire, and we hope you enjoy reading the story of Cultivate Farms, which is really the story of all of us.

Community of Practice 

Cultivate Farms has brought together 12 industry leaders from across Australia representing a cross section of agriculture. In this Community of Practice, we are sharing skills and expertise to enable community leaders to instigate farm transition at a grass roots level. 

At Cultivate Farms, we often get phone calls from industry and community leaders who are able to identify the problem in their area but don’t know how to address it. The problem? Skilled young people are leaving the area because they can’t buy property and don’t see farming as a viable career. The other thing they are telling us is that their current farmers are getting older, and they worry about what will happen. 

Through a Community of Practice, these community leaders will develop a blueprint, or handbook, to identify retiring farmers and aspiring farm owners in their area. Using the handbook, community leaders can explore potential methods for farm matches with the aspiring and retiring farmers. This is just one of the ways that Cultivate Farms is advocating for aspiring farm owners in Australia 

If you would like to express interest in being part of the Community of Practice for 2024, or know a community leader you think might be interested, get in touch amy@cultivatefarms.com 

Ageing on Farms Research 

A research project with La Trobe University has just been finalised. The Ageing on Farm research measured older farmers attitudes to ageing on farm, and if it changed after they had read Cultivate Farm’s Ageing on Farm Guide. 

Through the research, we learned that older Australian farmers, who will not pass on their farming business to a family member are still very interested in being able to age on farm. They perceive that ageing on farm affords benefits to stay connected to farming, their personal history, their farmland and to their friends, family and rural communities. Those researched considered that ageing on farm was more conducive to mental and physical wellbeing than moving off farm as they aged. 

One of the most interesting findings of the project, shows that ageing farmers wanted to support the next generation of farmers to look after their land, even if those farmers were not their own family. Cultivate Farms will be expanding our work in this area to achieve the dual goals of supporting individuals to age on farm, while empowering the next generation of farm owners. 

If you would like a copy of the Ageing on Farm Guide, please email amy@cultivatefarms.com.