Specialist valuations for Australian farms and agribusinesses.

An agribusiness valuation separates what a rural property appraisal blends together: land, water entitlements, the operating enterprise and biological assets, each valued on its own evidence. Prismi prepares evidence-led farm and agribusiness valuations for intergenerational succession, small business CGT concession claims, family law matters and restructures, concluding at the most supportable position within a documented range.

When a farm or agribusiness valuation is required

The dominant trigger is intergenerational succession — one child staying on the land, siblings settled off-farm, and parents who need to convert part of a lifetime's work into retirement funding without dismantling the operation. Succession pulls in the small business CGT concessions under Div 152 ITAA 1997, restructure rollovers under Subdiv 328-G, and often the family law courts, because contested farm succession is a family law dispute with a business attached. Other triggers include sale of the enterprise or aggregation to a neighbour, partnership and share-farming changes, deceased estates requiring values at historical dates, and bank-driven restructures. A rural property appraiser answers one question: what the land is worth. A succession plan needs several more — what the operating enterprise is worth, what the water is worth separately from the land, what maintainable earnings look like across a full cycle, and whether the numbers survive scrutiny from a sibling's lawyer or the ATO. That is a business valuation exercise, not a property appraisal, and it is where Prismi's work starts.

Separating land, water, enterprise and biological assets

Agribusiness valuation is an exercise in separation. Land is valued on a market value basis consistent with the Spencer v Commonwealth willing-but-not-anxious principle, typically informed by a rural property appraisal. Water entitlements are separately tradeable in most regulated systems and are often the most valuable single asset in the structure; they are valued from entitlement market evidence in the relevant trading zone, never bundled into the land figure. The operating enterprise — plant and equipment, contracts, any genuinely transferable goodwill — is valued from normalised earnings. Biological assets — livestock, standing crops, orchards and vines — are valued at fair value consistent with AASB 141, supported by saleyard, commodity and industry evidence. The report presents each layer separately and reconciles them to a total, because a blended figure cannot support a CGT concession claim on one asset class, a succession transfer of another, and a family law settlement across all of them. The separation is the methodology, not a presentation choice.

Earnings normalised across the full cycle, not the last three years

Three years of financials is standard practice in most industries and inadequate in agriculture. A three-year window that ends in drought understates maintainable earnings; one that ends in record commodity prices overstates them. Prismi works from five to ten years where the records exist, normalising for seasonal conditions, commodity price cycles, and one-off events such as flood or fire recovery. Farm Management Deposit movements and primary production income averaging mean the tax returns do not reflect economic earnings in any given year, so the analysis reconstructs the underlying trading result before anything is capitalised. Owner and family labour is normalised to market wages — a material adjustment on most family farms, where the accounts often show two generations working for less than a single market salary. The conclusion is a maintainable earnings figure the file can defend as representative of the cycle, with the seasonal and price assumptions stated explicitly rather than buried inside a multiple.

Quotas, licences and supply contracts valued explicitly

Fishing quota and licences, dairy supply agreements, poultry grower contracts and processor agreements are identifiable assets with their own value drivers — some trade in observable markets, others derive value from contract tenure, renewal terms and counterparty strength. They are valued explicitly rather than folded into goodwill. Where a supply contract is the reason the enterprise has value at all — as with many contract poultry and grower operations — counterparty concentration and renewal risk dominate the supportable range, and the report says so directly rather than presenting a single confident number the contract terms cannot support.

Carbon and ACCU project income as an earnings and risk overlay

Carbon projects registered under the ACCU scheme add an income stream and an encumbrance at the same time. Contracted ACCU revenue is assessed differently from uncontracted units exposed to spot pricing, and the permanence obligations attached to sequestration projects — which can run for decades — restrict future land use in ways that affect the land value itself. Where a project exists, the valuation treats ACCU income as a distinct earnings stream with its own risk profile and documents the effect of the project obligations on both the enterprise and the land. Where a project is proposed but not yet registered, it is a scenario, not a certainty, and the report treats it as one.

What the working file needs from you

• ·Five to ten years of financial statements and tax returns for each entity in the structure
• ·Water entitlement statements or register extracts, plus any temporary trade history
• ·Livestock trading schedules — natural increase, purchases, sales and deaths — and crop or production records
• ·Quota, licence, supply and grower contract documents with tenure and renewal terms
• ·Lease, agistment and share-farming agreements
• ·ACCU project registration, contract and permanence obligation details where a carbon project exists
• ·Land titles and any recent rural property appraisals
• ·A map of the entity structure — which entity holds the land, which runs the operation, and how they deal with each other

Which engagement tier fits a farm valuation

The Essential tier (from $1,495 + GST, 10–14 business days) suits an indicative position on a straightforward single-entity operation — early succession conversations, internal planning. Most succession and CGT engagements sit at the Comprehensive tier (from $3,995 + GST, 15–25 business days): full separation of land, water, enterprise and biological assets, cycle-normalised earnings, and documentation prepared with ATO market valuation expectations in mind. Where family law proceedings, a contested succession or a significant Div 152 claim are in play, the Defensible Valuation File (from $8,995 + GST, 25–35 business days) is the appropriate tier. Farm structures routinely hold land and operations in separate entities — additional entities are $750 each. Historical valuation dates for deceased estates or past transfers carry a $495 retrospective surcharge per date. For families weighing alternative succession structures before committing to one, the Valuation Range & Scenario Review is the premium engagement. Fees are fixed at engagement and never contingent on outcome. Prismi prepares independent valuations only — we are not a registered tax agent, and your accountant and lawyer apply the concessions and structure the transfer.