SOMERVILLE at Tuckurimba offers an exciting opportunity to take your place in Australian farming history.
The 488ha property, on Wyrallah Road about 20km south of Lismore & only 15 mins from Evans Head beach is the centre of a growing push on the NSW North Coast to begin growing ‘rain fed’ rice. Now it offers an opportunity for someone new as current principals John Stark and Robert Gray are retiring after 16 years work developing the property.
Mr Stark and Mr Gray are calling for expressions of interest from people interested in joining an equity partnership in the property, or in buying it outright with the current year’s crops, cash flow and unencumbered property all on the table.
Somerville shot into national headlines last year with the nation’s first commercial planting of non-irrigated rice. Preparations are now underway on the property to harvest up to 1200 tonnes of rice, with a gross value of over $650,000, from the 460 acres of rice planted last December.
The plantings follow a decade of research and have strong backing within the rice industry. National rice growers cooperative SunRice has set up a rice storage terminal and transport facility at Broadwater to support the local industry and plans are already being made for a rice milling plant as more farmers across the region pick up rice growing.
Last year, Somerville sold rice seed to more than 30 local farmers wanting to try rice. Interest surged after the farm recorded a solid harvest, despite intense wet weather which kept the crop in the ground three months longer than expected, but with no ill effect whatsoever.
With diversification as an important objective, rice now provides an important risk management option to complement the 400 acres of traditional sugar cane, maize and soy bean cropping, as well as a further 310 acres currently given over to cattle grazing. Plans to increase the area under rice in 2010 are well advanced.
The property is tended by veteran sharefarmers Greg and Gary Woolley who have long experience growing sugarcane, maize, and soy beans as well as managing cattle. It was Gary Woolley who began trialling rice varieties on the property in 2000 and who has demonstrated that rice can be a commercial success for North Coast farmers. The Woolleys are willing to continue as sharefarmers at Somerville if required by the purchaser.
Detailed budget figures are available to prospective purchasers or equity partners, including information on the property’s NSW Sugar Milling Cooperative mill shares and associated grower’s assignment. Projected yields, crop pricing and projected income – broken down into separate agricultural activities, as well as details of the way income and costs are split between Somerville’s sharefarmers and owners are also available.
All cattle paddocks have new four or five strand barbed wire and timber-post fencing. Cattle infrastructure includes new steel cattle yards and cattle drinking troughs connected to town water supply in reserve.
The property also has council approval to be consolidated into four distinct blocks each with road frontage to Wyrallah Road. Internal roads have been constructed to allow heavy transport access to cane loading pads. Well graded headlands and tracks permit rapid vehicular access to all parts of the property.
The property has a added benefit of a landing & take off strip for light aircraft.
With an average annual rainfall of 1349mm, the property has an abundance of water. An advanced, 11km, 66 megalitre drainage system complete with large capacity pumps have been set up on the property to help get water off the property quickly when the big rains come.