If the latest – and final – divestment of properties by Twynam Agricultural Group (see story, page 13) tells us anything, it’s confirmation of the old adage that “everything that goes around, comes around”. In other words, we shouldn’t get too steamed up about foreign ownership, or large-scale farm aggregations by this or that person or corporation, because pastoral empires are essentially ephemeral.
Or, as pioneer pastoralist Patrick “Patsy” Durack famously put it, in a letter to a newspaper in 1878: ‘ “Cattle kings” you call us, then we are Kings in grass castles that may be blown away upon a puff of wind’. Which is not to suggest that Twynam, or any of the other former pastoral empire-builders, departed the scene involuntarily, but depart they nearly all do, in time, for one reason or another.
And when they do, either someone else takes over what they have left behind, as we saw with the Stanbroke and Kidman empires, or they are broken up and sold piecemeal. The latter approach was taken (successfully) by Clyde Agriculture, in its six-year divestment program that began in 2008, and likewise by Twynam, whose final sales of its Lachlan River properties end a decade-long wind-down. In a sense, the wind-up of the Clyde and Twynam pastoral empires brings to a close a generational era of NSW corporate land ownership. Both companies took root here in the 1970s, before embarking on their major expansions in the 1980s and ‘90s which took them into the A-league of Australia’s wool, beef, grain and cotton producers. As is often the case, it was the vision of key personalities that drove the companies’ growth – in the case of Twynam, its Argentina-based founder John D. Kahlbetzer, and in Clyde’s case, John Swire and Sons’ UK-based chairman, Edward Scott.
The rise of Clyde and Twynam coincided with the demise of an earlier era of Australian corporate pastoralism: the era of the (mostly) UK-based land companies, which reached its zenith in the 1950s. Agricultural investment is by nature a long-term game and ill-suited to investors seeking competitive year-on-year returns, which explains why our most successful and enduring agricultural “empires” are controlled by families of long experience, rather than bean-counters. Meanwhile, a new breed of agricultural empire-builders has taken root, with the likes of Paraway Pastoral, MH Premium Farms, Hassad Australia, Rifa Salutary, Glencore, Cargill, Westchester and Webster. Most are foreign-owned (or at least financed), some are in it for investment returns, others for strategic reasons. Either way, they will be improving (we hope) Australian land, employing Australian workers, sourcing local inputs and fuelling regional economies. But whether all – or indeed, any – of them will still be with us in 20 or 30 years’ time is another matter. History suggests otherwise. But while owners might change, the land remains.
- Peter Austin
