It said that anecdotally, while some farmers are shifting to free up capital by leasing land instead of owning it, others are using the latest technology and striking contracts with the supply chain to grow.

Rural Bank, a subsidiary of Bendigo Bank, has contracted the Regional Australia Institute to do the survey and deny it was about picking winners among the 135,700 farms.

"For us it's about understanding the sector," said Andrew Smith, the general manager of agribusiness at the Rural Bank.

"Across well over 100,000 farms, we deal with those [small-scale farms], but the growth segment tends to be in the middle to large farming enterprise, but we're not forgetting people on the emerging side of the curb or may well have had a matured business, are not growing, but have good experience and skills."

ABC Rural said that the Regional Australia Institute claimed this was "the most comprehensive study ever undertaken into Australian agriculture".

CEO Jack Archer said if Australian agriculture was to nearly double its value to $100 billion by 2030, it would need to attract motivated entrepreneurs.

"We know we've got corporate agriculture, [it's] an important part of the sector, but the heart of the sector remains the small and medium size often family run [farms]. What the sector really needs is ambitious entrepreneurs who can grow their businesses, be the targets for investment - foreign or domestic – and be the next growth phase of agricultural businesses."

Modern farmers building global partnerships

The modern farm entrepreneurs might look like Jan Vydra of Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs.

He's based in the Dandenong, in Victoria, and has a fresh herb and edible flower business that he started with a business partner William Pham in 2008."We've got a partner in Flowerdale Farms and [are] exporting out to Malaysia, Singapore and shortly South Korea," he told ABC Rural.

Vydra's has set up a $500,000 greenhouse and is interested in multi-storeyed growing. He saw similar ideas on a Nuffield Scholar's tour this year. Since his return, he has received a Rabobank award as an emerging agribusiness leader.

"I travelled through the US and met companies such as Aerofarms, looking at vertical cropping and freight farms growing vegetables in freight containers, and vegetable factories in Japan, but I'm a big believer that technology is not our only pathway, sometimes simple things, growing things the way things should be grown is also very valuable.

"So our strategy will have a high tech component and a natural component and a lot of money will be spent on developing our people, and allowing them to interface with plants, not necessarily a ‘you-bewt’ greenhouse."

The survey of modern farm entrepreneurs will also seek to map the economic and social role farmers play in their communities. It's an anonymous survey, which is available on the Rural Bank website, and is open until 4 November.

Source: abc.com.au