agCap sharefarmer hangs up footy boots after 30-years

As reported in The Examiner, agCap sharefarmer Wayne Saward has decided to retire from 30-years of playing Australian rules football. Celebrating his last game, Wayne was able to play alongside his three sons, Alex, Damien and Sam with Yeoman, his local Burnie team. As Sam is a junior a special request had to be put to the local league to allow him to play alongside his father.

Wayne and his wife Caroline are in their fourth year of operating their sharefarming business  on Blythe Vale, which is owned by the Sustainable Agriculture Fund. With 25-years experience in the dairy industry, Wayne estimates he’s worked on eight or nine dairy farms in his time. “This is the best farm we’ve been on,” he said of the 800-plus cow dairy farm.

Part of the appeal is agCap’s unique system of management. “Our share farming approach is to delegate responsibility to sharefarmers. This includes responsibility for the staff who work alongside them. We think it is more in keeping with our Australian family farming tradition, but with the benefit of institutional investment” explains Wolfie Wagner, General Manager for Livestock at agCap.

When combined with governance and systems in areas such as safety, budgets,  and capital expenditure the system works extremely well. As Wayne explains, “We choose who works with us. Every one of them has been with us since we started. Everybody knows what to do. We don’t have to talk about it when we get here. We all just go about our business.”