VicNoTill new board member takes a regenerative approach to corporate farming

December 29, 2023

Angus Ingram

Kilter Rural

Kyabram VIC & Tocumwal NSW

Agricultural investment manager Angus Ingram has a curious mind and asks an endless stream of questions. When it comes to profitable farming systems, he believes farmers shouldn’t hesitate to ask more questions.

“Most people trust what their agronomist of the past 20 years tells them but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be always questioning them. The agronomy of your farming system is a critically important relationship. If you are going to spend a whole lot of money on advice and then on the products that advice recommends, you should be asking questions. And lots of them.”

It is Angus’s curiosity about soil carbon, soil health and profitable farming systems that led him to his first VicNoTill conference last year.

“When I heard people like Graeme Sait, David Thompson and Brendan Pattison I thought to myself, these are the people I need to be around.”

Farm and water assets

Angus is the general manager of farmland for Kilter Rural which manages farm and water assets for investors. He is responsible for farms at Kyabram in the Goulburn Valley, Victoria and Tocumwal in NSW. Kilter will take full possession of the new Tocumwal aggregation in the New Year.

Approximately 80% of arable area at Kyabram is irrigated for crops including canola for seed and crushing, wheat, Tritordeum, faba beans, azuki beans, corn. They are planting buckwheat this coming autumn.

“Essentially it’s a program of bread-and-butter winter crops supported by some shorter-season summer crops to optimise the irrigation systems where possible.”

In addition to the more typical flood irrigation layouts, there is 240ha of pivot and 260ha of sub-surface drip tape, a legacy from when Kilter was Australia’s largest grower of field processing tomatoes, now no longer in the rotation.

Risk, agronomy

Managing risk on behalf of their investors is at the heart of their farming system. Angus says when you ‘get into the weeds of it all’, managing risk is all about managing farm agronomy.

He sees the VicNoTill’s systems approach to farming as a sensible way to manage risk.

“VicNoTill farmers want to become better farmers, which means they improve the soil and their broader farm ecosystems while at the same time being more profitable. This aligns closely with the goals of Kilter Rural which was why I was keen to get more involved.”

Kilter Rural takes a regenerative approach to their farming systems, striving for soils that:

Contain living roots/photosynthesising plants,
Are covered,
Have porosity,
Infiltrate water effectively,
Are not compacted,
Have an abundance of worms,
Cycle nutrients well,
Are not overloaded with macro elements such as phosphorous or nitrogen,
Have a strong microbial population,
Have healthy levels of soil organic carbon,
Don’t have an obvious constraint to production such as salinity issues,
Are preferably fungal dominant and not bacterial dominant,

… and grow vigorous healthy crops or pastures as a result.

“I’m not suggesting the VicNoTill has the silver bullet solutions to achieve all this for our soils, but it’s refreshing to be around people who are always asking the questions. They are thinking about soil health and agronomy in a different way.”

Revegetate at scale

Kilter Rural invests in farms that offer opportunity to revegetate at scale, so they can reach production targets and landscape vegetation targets in parallel.

“If you have the natural landscape balance right where you have habitat, wind breaks, and are creating micro-climates, you are complementing long-term production. If you’re just farming in a monoculture without all these complimentary ecosystem services going on, you’re pushing against nature constantly.

“Kilter Rural’s goal over the past 20 years has been to marry commercial agriculture with sustained ecosystem protection.”

Kilter Rural is the first corporate-scaled farmer in Australia to have independently certified environmental condition accounts. Since being established in 2004, Kilter Rural has regenerated more than 12,000ha of farm and ecosystem landscape, implemented a soil and environmental regeneration model and is Australia’s most experienced water investment manager.

“Our overarching philosophy is to unlock value in rural landscapes to deliver financial returns with positive environmental and social impacts.”

Innovations and trials

Angus started his love of agriculture in his 20s jackarooing at Mt Isa and working on other farms for a decade before joining the ANZ Bank as an agricultural manager. He shifted into agricultural investment management eight years ago.

He oversees more than 9,000 hectares of arable land and says context and a sensible balance in the way you manage a farming system is as important at a corporate scale as it is for a family farm.

He knows he can learn a lot from the innovations and trials in the paddocks of VicNoTill farmers.

“I am not on the tractor, mixing the seed, or applying the foliars, however, much of what I do relates back to the health of the soil. I’m particularly interested in how VicNoTill is striving for the most efficient way to manage a regenerative farming system.”

Faba beans in October 2023, Kyabram. Pivot irrigated.

Positive in ag

Angus said Kilter Rural was very positive about the returns they can generate from agriculture.

“If you look at what Kilter Rural has achieved over the past couple of decades, you can clearly see the benefit to astute investors of agribusiness assets that balance farming, water and ecosystem protection.

“We manage landscapes rather than managing one crop or paddock of wheat from one season to the next, but our approach is long-term management for long-term investment. There is a natural synergy with our thinking and that of VicNoTill farmers. They’re in it for the long haul and are not focussed on short-term outcomes – they understand that the changes they make will take time to fall into place.”

Angus says Australian farmers are world leaders in applying technology for resource use, being early adopters and striving for sustained production of food and fibre.

“Since Australian agriculture doesn’t have a strong safety net of income (read subsidies) the industry needs to be progressive to remain highly competitive over the long-term.

“All these are critical to meeting global population trajectories we’re facing, with talk of needing to feed several billion more people by 2050. We have no more arable land available so we simply must produce more with less.”

Water security is a big focus for Kilter Rural. They are in partnership with Nature Conservancy Australia in the Murray-Darling Basin Balanced Water Fund (BWF) which is Australia’s only explicit impact water fund investing in water markets.

“Water is a limiting factor in virtually all agricultural systems and Kilter Rural has invested significantly in water assets.