ONFARM
Lease hunger rewarded with ownership BY: TIM FULTON PHOTOS: JOHNNY HOUSTON
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easing has helped Canterbury lease-holder Tom Magill into a first farm and he’s hungry for more in a red-hot property market. Tom had a start in life at port-side Lyttelton, where he’d head across the harbour on weekend trips with his father to help friends with tailing, odd jobs and a spot of shooting. He soon picked up the farming bug, spurred on by family moving on to a lifestyle block near Lincoln. Barely a teen, Tom started buying and fattening 30 to 40 sheep at a time on nearby sections. At 17 he left school and went building then tried milking cows, but neither pushed his buttons. His spark came from his first hill country job at Purau, back on Banks Peninsula. As a casual musterer Tom met a couple of ex-shearing and fencing contractors who taught him their priceless skills: whenever there was no mustering work around he took to the shears. Helped by his partner on the boards, ex-pat German national Stella Bauer, his best shearing year while farming was about 6000 head. By the time he was 19, Tom had his first farm lease – one of many that have helped him to now run 11,000 stock units on 1650ha with the help of two staff. The market for lease properties is much more competitive than when he started 18 years ago, he says. “Every man and his dog wants to have a crack now. Especially on the Peninsula there’s a lot of people trying to add scale to their businesses to make them more viable. People who’ve been farming for quite a long time feel like they want to keep going so there’s quite a big demand for leasing properties – and they’re willing to pay the money for it.”
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It’s a concern for Tom, who has always been careful with his capital and says the key to leasing is cost-control. “You have to do as much as you physically can yourself until you get to a scale where you can start employing contractors. So, in the early days we were just flat knacker, doing everything to keep costs down.” And over time he has become more discerning about the property he takes on. “I think you’ve got to watch that. You’re not going to do it just for the sake of doing it. As we got scale I wanted to make sure that what we were doing, we were doing properly.” Whatever the property and no matter the return, Tom never loses sight of his ultimate goal: farm ownership. He sweats over real estate listings and keeps his ear out for all sorts of propositions, but there’s a real lack of suitable properties for first-time buyers, he says. “They’re either too big or they’re chased by some other farming sector with money – like pine trees. Dare I say, it probably is getting a bit harder but you just don’t want to give up. There are always opportunities – and we will get there. And we’re building ourselves into a position now where it’s getting closer.” He secured his most recent leases by public tender, benefiting from a reputation as a careful, diligent type. “I was fortunate to have opportunities come my way but I do believe that if you’re hard working and you’ve got the ability then people back you a bit more. The real key for me is to treat places like you own them. The people that you lease from appreciate that; they can see it – the weeds, the fences, everything. And it makes life a lot easier when
