Podcast · Business

Profitable Farmer

by Farm Owners Academy · English · Business

This show is all about increasing the profitability of your farm so you work smarter and not harder. Your host, Jeremy Hutchings (Managing Director at Farm Owners Academy), reveals the best farming business tips for more leverage in your farm business.

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 57 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

#202 - You Don’t Have to Inherit a Farm to Build a Great One - Tim & Hannah from The Food Farm

Achieving a successful startup as a first-generation farmer is a tough assignment. On top of that, achieving a ‘direct to consumer, first generation farm’ is even harder. Tens of thousands, as you all know, have tried. Very few have succeeded. Meet Tim and Hannah and The Food Farm. Their story is remarkable. Their passion inspiring. Their determination unwavering. 5 years ago, Tim was a sole-operator contractor… surviving on borrowed machinery and blind faith. Hannah an opera singer from inner-Adelaide. Their first $2,000 came from a potato harvest festival that was nearly washed out by…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E201 · 24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
#201 - Do You Have Your Life in Order? with Longevity Expert Marcus Pearce
What if living longer had less to do with finding the perfect diet, supplement or exercise program… and more to do with how we live, what we believe and who we surround ourselves with? In this episode, I’m joined by the incredible Marcus Pearce, a longevity strategist, speaker, author and host of 100 Not Out. Marcus recently joined us at our FOA Deep Dive Workshop, and I was struck again by the way he challenges so many of the assumptions we carry around health, ageing and what it means to live a genuinely exceptional life. We explore: Why purpose, physical activity and social connection are…
E200 · 10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
#200 - Uncertainty Is the Only Certainty - Building Resilience with Maria Ruberto
Uncertainty Is the Only Certainty: Building Resilience with Psychologist Maria Ruberto Two hundred episodes in, and the thread running through nearly all of them is this: the numbers matter, but what's going on in our heads and hearts is what determines whether we thrive or just survive. So for this milestone, I wanted to talk human emotions properly, starting with the one none of us can avoid. Uncertainty is almost the only certainty we've got as farmers. But it isn't a sign that something's wrong with you. It's a normal state your brain moves into when it can't predict what happens next,…
E199 · 27 Aug 2026 · 46 min
#199 - Proud to Be Pioneering the Uptake of AI in Our Industry, with Sam Johnsson, CEO, Farm Owners Academy
AI is moving fast — incredibly fast — and whether we like it or not, the game has changed. In this week’s episode, I sit down with Sam Johnsson, CEO of Farm Owners Academy. Sam, along with Michaela, Greg, and the broader FOA team, has been doing outstanding work in this space, not just exploring what AI can do, but figuring out how we can use it practically to build better businesses and better outcomes for farm owners. We unpack what AI really means for agriculture and why I believe the opportunity in front of us is enormous. From using ChatGPT or Claude as a smarter research partner,…
E198 · 13 Aug 2026 · 38 min
# 198 - How Much Profit Should Your Farm Really Be Making? With your host, Jeremy Hutchings, Managing Director, Farm Owners Academy
There is a question every farming family should be able to answer with confidence: How well is our farm business actually performing — and what is it truly capable of? Not just whether there’s cash in the bank. Not whether we’ve had a good season. And not whether we’re doing things a bit better than they’ve always been done. I mean really understanding the strength of the business model underneath it all. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time on-farm with a number of our members, sitting around kitchen tables, driving around properties and getting deep into the…
E197 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
# 197 - A Legal Perspective on Farm Succession - Pat Barrett, Walsh & Blair
Pat Barrett has spent nearly twenty years at Walsh & Blair, and before that he was playing regional rugby for the Wagga Waratahs, learning lessons about mateship, discipline, and common goals that he still leans on today when he sits across the table from farming families trying to navigate succession. In this episode, I sit down with Pat, director at Walsh & Blair and one of the most respected rural lawyers in the Riverina, to talk about what actually makes succession work. And what quietly wrecks it. We started with rugby, and the idea that not knowing the rules can get you hurt. So often…
E196 · 17 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
# 196 - The Power of Aligning Your Family to a Clear, Common Goal, with FOA Coaches Elle Webb & Kerrie Smith
If a plan only lives in your head, no one else can help you make it happen. That's the line that sits at the heart of this conversation. Because so often on a family farm, there isn't one plan. There are two, or three, or four, each one living quietly inside a different family member's head, each one slightly different, and none of them written down anywhere everyone can see. In this episode, I'm joined by two of our senior FOA coaches, Elle Webb and Kerrie Smith. Both started, in their own words, at a zero out of ten when it came to having a clear, documented, common plan for their farm…
E195 · 3 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
# 195 - Breeding Better, Building Smarter The Science of Genetic Gain with Dr Mark Ferguson, neXtgen Agri
What if the best investment you could make on your farm costs nothing extra to feed, never needs a day off, and compounds in value every single year? That's the case Dr Mark Ferguson has been making for 30 years. And the numbers back him up. Mark is a sheep geneticist turned ag tech founder who grew up on a family farm in the Victorian Mallee. After completing his PhD in Merino genetics, he founded neXtgen Agri to help sheep and beef producers across Australia and New Zealand breed better and build more profitable enterprises. He also heads up Genesmith, an AI-powered sheep facial…
E194 · 18 Jun 2026 · 56 min
# 194 - The Origin & Impact of the McGrath Foundation, with Co-founder Tracy Bevan
Some friendships change your life. This one changed Australia. When Tracy Bevan met Jane McGrath at an airport café in 1996, they were simply two British women far from home, trying to find their place in a new country while their husbands travelled the world playing cricket. What neither of them knew was that a friendship forged over cups of tea, loneliness, laughter and life's challenges would go on to impact hundreds of thousands of Australian families. Tracy co-founded the McGrath Foundation with Jane in 2005. Two cricket wives, a kitchen table, no roadmap. Before Jane passed away in…
E193 · 5 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
# 193 - The 3 BIG Mistakes Grain Growers Are Making And What It’s Costing, with Market Check Leaders, Brett Stevenson & Nick Crundall
There’s an old saying that uncertainty creates opportunity. But if you're a grain grower right now, uncertainty can also create confusion, hesitation, and some pretty costly decisions. Over the past few years, we've seen massive swings in commodity prices, input costs, weather patterns, and global politics. For many farm businesses, it feels like the rules keep changing. One minute we're talking about record production and oversupply. The next, global conflict, fund money, and drought concerns are driving volatility back into the market. In this episode, I'm joined by Market Check’s Managing…
E192 · 21 May 2026 · 41 min
# 192 - The Incredible AgriWebb Story – Part 2 with Co-Founder, John Fargher
In Part 1, John Fargher took us back to the beginning, exploring the early days of AgriWebb and the farming families who backed a young ag tech company long before the rest of the industry could see what it would become. If you haven't listened to that one yet, we recommend starting there. In Part 2, the story gets bigger. Because beneath the global partnerships and the rapid growth, this episode is really about how farming families move from recording the past to actually getting ahead of it. At the centre of it all is still the farm business itself. The producer who knows their country…
E191 · 8 May 2026 · 59 min
# 191 - The Incredible AgriWebb Story – Part 1 with Co-Founder, John Fargher
John Fargher grew up on a remote family station in the Northern Flinders Ranges, where distance, drought, hard work and innovation were simply part of life. He saw first-hand how quickly farming can change. A station that once needed 40 people could later run with four or five. Horses gave way to motorbikes. Water runs that once took days could be done in hours by plane. Each shift changed what was possible, and left John asking one question: what is the next step change in livestock agriculture? That question became AgriWebb. In this episode, John Fargher, co-founder of AgriWebb, shares the…
E190 · 24 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
# 190 - Are Your Business Structures Impeding Your Farm Business’s Success? with Andy Fenton
A good season can hide a lot. So can a strong balance sheet. But performing well on the surface does not always mean the business is built on the right foundation. Risk builds quietly. Options narrow over time. And by the time most farm owners recognise it, they have less room to move than they thought. In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Andy Fenton, Managing Director of Fenton Financial, who brings more than 20 years of experience across financial planning, funds management and investment banking, to unpack a confronting but important idea: It can be our business structures that kill…
E189 · 10 Apr 2026 · 53 min
# 189 - Fertiliser & Fuel Prices: How to Lead Through This New Economic Uncertainty with Tracy Secombe & Sam Johnsson
Are you concerned by the uncertainty surrounding increased fuel prices? Is the current global turmoil challenging your view on how to best navigate this season? The biggest risk right now is not fuel, fertiliser, interest rates, or global instability. It's panic. Uncertainty has a way of hijacking clear thinking. It pulls people into worst-case scenarios and pushes reactive decisions before the facts are fully in. That is where the real damage starts. Not in the disruption itself, but in the response to it. Because when something shifts, whether it is a headline, a price rise, or a…
E188 · 26 Mar 2026 · 43 min
# 188 - Knowing Your Numbers How to Build A Stronger Farm Financial System with Jayne Walsh, Tim Fowler, Renee Nicholls, and Bec Balfour
This week, Sam Johnsson hijacks the podcast while I’m off on a skiing holiday in Austria and he takes on a topic that might not sound flashy, but can quietly change everything in a farm business: building a strong financial system. Because for a lot of farm owners, the numbers are still something that sit in the background until they become a problem. And that’s a hard way to lead. When the books are behind, the reporting is patchy, or the numbers only come out at tax time, it leaves people making big decisions without a clear view of where the business is actually at. That creates stress,…
E187 · 12 Mar 2026 · 50 min
# 187 - Legacy Isn’t Land: Rethinking What Succession Success Looks Like with Mike Stephens
Selling the family farm can feel like the ultimate failure. For a lot of farming families, it can carry guilt, grief, and the sense that something precious has been lost. But Mike Stephens challenges that story head-on. Mike is the founder of Meridian Agriculture, one of Australia’s oldest and most experienced agricultural consulting firms, and the author of Life After Farming. For decades, he has helped farming families navigate the people side of agriculture with practical support around succession, transition, and decision-making. He argues the real measure of “successful succession” is…
E186 · 26 Feb 2026 · 43 min
# 186 - An Overheated Stock Market Crash in 2026? How to Get Ready with Terry Tran
As we step into 2026, there’s a lot of noise out there. Geopolitical tension. AI hype. Market highs. Media drama. And if you’re a farm owner trying to make steady, strategic decisions in the middle of a tight season… it can feel like one more thing to carry. In this episode, I sit down with my good mate Terry Tran, founder of Freedom Trader, to cut through the headlines and look at what the data is actually telling us. Because while the media sells emotion, markets move on numbers. And if you’re building off-farm wealth whether inside super, a managed fund, or direct equities, this matters.…
E185 · 13 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
#185 - From Farm Operator to Farm CEO with Ben & Kate Johns
What if the real constraint in your business isn’t effort, seasons, or skill, but the role you’re still stuck playing? For Ben and Kate, this question didn’t arrive neatly. It crept in over time. Their journey took them far from the farm first, through university, into investment banking in London, and straight into the pressure cooker of the GFC. Long hours. High stakes. A world where structure and accountability were non-negotiable. Choosing to come home to the family farm wasn’t about escaping work. It was about building something of their own. What they returned to was a third-generation…
E184 · 30 Jan 2026 · 45 min
# 184 - Out of the Shadows of Succession: Taking the Lead as a Family, with Simon and Naomi Goode
There comes a moment in every farm business where the question isn’t how much more can we do, it’s what do we actually want to build? For Simon and Naomi Goode, that moment came after years of doing everything: cropping, hay, livestock, all while raising four kids and managing 3,200 hectares in Victoria’s eastern Wimmera. They weren’t in crisis. In fact, from the outside, they were flying. But inside, they were carrying too much. Too many moving parts. Too many long days. Not enough space to step back, lead strategically, or live the life they were working so hard to create. In this episode,…
E183 · 15 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
# 183 - Scaling from Scratch: The Rise Behind Nala Agribusiness and Red Dirt Lamb with Lachlan & Anna Sutton
There comes a point when the late nights, the mental load, and the constant pressure make you wonder... how much longer can we keep doing this? Lachlan and Anna Sutton hit that point. Burnt out. Leasing land. Bucketing grain by hand while raising three young kids. Then something shifted. In this episode, their FOA Accountability Coach, Hayley Grosser speaks with Lachie and Anna, a couple who, in just 18 months, scaled from those long, heavy days to owning their first property, finishing over 20,000 lambs a year, launching a vertically integrated meat brand, Red Dirt Lamb, and holding a bold…
E182 · 18 Dec 2025 · 44 min
# 182 - Out Of Survival Mode Burnout, Balance, and Breakthroughs with Andrew Graham
What if the hardest seasons in your business turned out to be the ones that set you free? In this deeply honest episode, Marina Gregor, one of our senior business coaches sits down with Andrew Graham, a cattle producer from southwest Victoria, to explore a powerful story of resilience, family, and business transformation. Andrew was previously burnt out, juggling operations management for a large-scale dairy business while navigating succession plans for his own family farm. Fast forward to today, and his world looks remarkably different, with a thriving cattle operation with 2,500 head,…
E181 · 4 Dec 2025 · 46 min
# 181 - The 3 Secret Killers of Family Farming Businesses Confusion, Control and Conflict, with Jeremy Hutchings
As we reach the business end of the season for many, this episode offers a quiet reflection on some of the deeper and important challenges showing up for farming families and their business teams right across the country. There’s no guest this time. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to share some of my learnings and observations over the year through coaching calls, leadership workshops, and time spent walking alongside farm owners who are doing their best to juggle family, team, operations, and future planning. What continues to surface are three common forces quietly undermining even the…
E180 · 20 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
# 180 - Leadership Lessons From Elite Rugby and Dairy Farming With Sam Whitelock
Sam Whitelock knows pressure. He’s captained the All Blacks through some of rugby’s most intense moments. He’s made high-stakes decisions with the weight of a nation on his shoulders. And now, he’s turned that same grit and composure to life on the farm. But here’s what Sam’s learned. Real leadership isn’t about powering through at all costs. It’s knowing when to push and when to pause. When to speak and when to listen. And how to look after yourself, so you can lead others well. In this episode, Sam opens up about his transition from rugby to farming, the lessons he’s learned along the way,…
E179 · 6 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 13 min
# 179 - Touring to 50+ FOA Farms Across Australia with Tim and Cheryl Freak
“You’re doing better than you think.” It’s the simple, powerful reminder that Tim and Cheryl Freak leave behind after every farm visit. In this episode, I sit down with two of our long-time FOA members and coaches, Tim and Cheryl, who have spent the past three years deeply embedded in our community, supporting hundreds of farm businesses across Australia. This year alone, they’ve completed more than 50+ full day, in-person visits and share rare insight into what’s really going on in farming right now. From drought-hit sheep properties in Victoria, to feedlot expansions in NSW, to cropping…
E178 · 23 Oct 2025 · 57 min
# 178 - What Is The Future For? Wool Can It Survive? With Jamie & Will Swales
Australia’s wool sector is still feeling the pinch. There’s no doubt the last couple of years have been challenging, with recent decile two and three prices making it hard for many businesses to stay afloat. But despite these obstacles, the Swales of Woodlands set an example of resilience. They’re carrying 150 years of family heritage into the future, proving that even in the face of adversity, there are opportunities to adapt and thrive. This week, I’m joined by Jamie & Will Swales both proud Platinum Mastermind Alumni from Woodlands, a 4,265 ha merino operation 55 km west of Armidale in…
E177 · 9 Oct 2025 · 57 min
# 177 - Premium, High Marbling Lamb Is Here. With Tom Bull from LAMBPRO
After more than 15 years of focused breeding, data collection, and persistence, Tom Bull and his team at LAMBPRO have achieved what many thought was impossible: the creation of KS7, a Marble Score 7 lamb, developed in partnership with Meat & Livestock Australia, Endeavour Meats, and chef Matt Moran. This high-marbling lamb delivers the same eating quality, juiciness, and tenderness that consumers love in premium beef. But this story isn’t just about a product. It’s about the vision, innovation, and belief that Australian lamb can compete on the global stage for the most discerning markets.…
E176 · 26 Sep 2025 · 42 min
# 176 - Will Red Meat Prices Crash or Hold With Expert Analyst Simon Quilty
Australian cattle and lamb markets are at a tipping point. Prices have surged to record highs, but according to leading analyst Simon Quilty, we’re about to hit what he calls “unsustainable pricing.” Bringing over 30 years of hard-won market insight to the table, Simon Quilty has worked with top firms including Louis Dreyfus, ConAgra, DR Johnston, and FC Stone. Today, he helps large financial institutions and farmers alike make sense of the complex forces shaping the red meat sector. In this episode, Simon delivers a no-nonsense forecast: cattle rallying up to 750c/kg before falling back to…
E175 · 11 Sep 2025 · 57 min
# 175 - From Refugee To Financial Freedom - The Terry Tran Story
At just two years old, Terry Tran fled Vietnam by boat with his parents, was rescued after days lost at sea, and spent months on a Malaysian refugee island. It was there, on Christmas Eve, that a storm claimed his father’s life, leaving his 21-year-old mother widowed with a toddler to raise. From those humble beginnings, Terry has built a life of financial freedom, not through shortcuts but through patience, persistence and following a clear process. Along the way, he was also shaped by the kindness of others, a reminder that generosity can change lives. In this conversation, Terry shares…
E174 · 28 Aug 2025 · 55 min
# 174 - Nothing Beats High Prices like High Prices with Brett Stevenson, Market Check
In recent years grain growers nationally have enjoyed an extended period of strong prices and favourable market conditions. According to grain industry authority, Brett Stevenson, Managing Director of Market Check, this may well be all about to change. Of the back of last month’s Australian Grains Industry Conference (AGIC), I invite Brett to once again join me to give us his expert insights to the new headwinds Aussie grain growers now face in coming years. As grain prices face downward pressure, Brett Stevenson offers invaluable insight on navigating a challenging global market – it seems…
E173 · 15 Aug 2025 · 1 hr 32 min
# 173 - Beating Brain Cancer with Sam McGuane
From growing up on a dairy farm in western Victoria with 12 siblings to the frontlines of one of the toughest fights in medical research, Sam McGuane’s story is one of resilience, service, and hope. As the inaugural Chief Executive Officer of The Brain Cancer Centre, and a key leader behind Carrie’s Beanies for Brain Cancer, Sam is on a mission to transform the future of brain cancer research. In this heartfelt episode, Sam opens up about how the values of gratitude, service, and hard work, ingrained in him growing up on the farm, have shaped his approach to both business and charity. These…

About Profitable Farmer

Profitable Farmer is a English business podcast from Farm Owners Academy. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Farm Owners Academy
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 57 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1309434515

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