There are two key lessons for Australia’s broader agricultural sector from yesterday’s announcement of the bid for the Kidman cattle empire from Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and its ­Chinese partner Shanghai CRED.

The first is the acceptable model for Chinese investment in Australian farmland — with all the emotive, political and nationalistic sensitivities that go hand in glove with it — is finally becoming clearer.

As most Chinese companies increasingly are realising, the total or majority ownership of agricult­ural assets is not necessary to ­either benefit financially from rising long-term rural land values or to secure export food deals.

Usually a 33 per cent share — as in Shanghai CRED’s venture with Hancock — or, in some cases, a 50 per cent stake is good enough. It also avoids the political knockbacks that have plagued the competing majority Shanghai Pengxin bid for Kidman over the past year. More practically, the Chinese are realising farming in Australia is not easy.

Partnering with an ­existing high performing Australian agricultural business — as in the case of Cubbie Station’s Shandong Ruyi joint venture with the proven Lempriere and Roger Fletcher groups — is now seen within Chin­ese and other foreign investment circles as a much ­better, more sophisticated and less risky way to go.

The second takeaway message is the undeniable rise of Rinehart as a force in agriculture.

With five large cattle stations recently bought in northern Western Australia and the Northern Territory, her footprint in the northern cattle industry was already ­on the increase.

So too were her southern cattle interests growing, with three prime farms recently bought on which to breed and fatten her newly acquired Wagyu herd.

But with the purchase of the Kidman empire, with its nine ­remaining stations — now almost all showing green grass and full dams — covering seven million ­hectares and including 200,000 cattle, Rinehart has now risen to become a serious new and ­dominating force in Australian agriculture.

Please contact us in case of Copyright Infringement of the photo sourced from the internet, we will remove it within 24 hours.