Agriculture has proven a difficult sector in which big money institutional investors can make consistently solid returns, partly because they have not had access to enough people with the right qualifications looking after their assets.
While the past decade's droughts and market mishaps have not helped, Growth Farms Australia boss, David Sackett, said the sector had traditionally been top heavy with jackaroos and farm hands who had risen into management ranks with a "fairly traditional view of managing a fairly traditional agricultural system".
"To put it politely, I'd say the track record of many asset managers 10 years ago was embarrassing and at best, patchy," he said.
The best reported corporate agricultural investment performers during the past 15 years tended to be listed public companies achieving total annual returns for investors of up to 46 per cent, 21pc and 15.6pc (including gains on their land values and share market valuations).
But others had returns down to just 4.2pc, 1.2pc or in negative territory as low as -6pc.
Investor returns were often hard to assess, possibly because asset managers or investment institutions deliberately kept performance details "opaque" to avoid too much outside scrutiny.
However, more recently the farm investment sector was employing asset managers with broader, more relevant tertiary education and financial management experience, said Mr Sackett.
His own 27-year-old Growth Farms business manages properties with asset values exceeding $380 million for investor clients from Europe, Asia, North America and Australia.
"It's understandable that institutional investors have been reluctant to commit too much to agriculture, but the greater skill level and more transparency we're now seeing bodes well for the future of corporate agriculture in Australia," he said.
Also vital to the the industry's success was getting more productivity from funds invested in farms and minimising waste from production inputs, including better land, water and capital utilisation, and greater labour efficiency.
Mr Sackett said while notable gains had been made in the cropping sector, parts of the dairy industry and on many large scale northern beef enterprises, the beef industry still had "huge opportunities" to lift productivity.
The wool industry probably had the worst track record at improving its return from inputs at a farm and broader industry level.
Mr Sackett singled out peak industry organisation Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) for particular scrutiny, noting AWI had a huge research and development task, but was increasingly spending more of its budget away from the farm gate.
"The wool industry badly needs better farm productivity, but only 12pc of AWI's R and D budget is spent on farm projects."
