This spring presents as one of the best times to market rural property, according to CBRE agribusiness managing director David Goodfellow.

Mr Goodfellow noted this was the second consecutive year that many of the main grain growing regions on the eastern seaboard were set to hopefully have good to above average yields – making it optimal to market rural property.

“Further to this we have a world grain deficit situation arising due to the drought in Northern America and Russia, as well as grain quality issues with the harvest that’s currently underway in Europe. This is potentially creating the perfect outcome for Australian grain growers, where they have high yield potential and high grain prices at the same time,” he said.

“Livestock prices have also reached new levels this year with the EYCI and Restocker lamb indicator both breaking 1000 cents this month as the national herd and flock continues to rebuild and grass remains in abundance.”

CBRE agribusiness associate directors Boo Harvey and James Auty believe the outlook for horticulture and dairy is also looking bright.

“Many of the irrigators in southern NSW are gearing up for large summer cropping programs this year, particularly to grow rice and cotton as water is plentiful and gross margins for both these crops are looking very positive again this year” he said.

Mr Auty said farmers upgrading their farm machinery and equipment to build labour efficiencies into their businesses and partly to offset tax was another new trend.

“To justify having equipment such as a header or spray rig that might be worth half a million dollars or modern livestock handling equipment, farmers obviously need scale,” he said.

Ms Harvey added that while many observers had predicted that farmers would see this as an ideal time to “get out”, the reverse was happening in many cases.

“While we have never seen a better time to sell, the trend we are currently seeing is nearly the reverse. In many cases, families are not so much thinking ‘let’s sell and everyone can get their share’, but more thinking ‘let’s get bigger’ for greater economies of scale and to acquire more land for future generations,” he said.