As the price of reliable rainfall farmland in Western Australia is careering past $10,000 per hectare, and the big corporates are out there with their even bigger chequebooks, outbidding the neighbours, what options do farmers have if they want to stay in the game?

Well, the answer is to follow the example of their forefathers and up stumps and find a new country with some new land that can be opened up.

Unfortunately, unless you want to learn Portuguese and go to Brazil, Angola, or Mozambique, the options are not looking good.

But if you want established land with a long track record of productivity and you are prepared to take on some personal risk then all roads lead to Ukraine and Russia while their war is hot and their farmland market is cool.

Unfortunately, the other option was to saddle up and head to polo and tango land, Argentina, but considering 4-6 tonnes per hectare wheat farming land over there is now $6,000 – $10,000 an acre, all road leads to the Black Sea where the land is still cheap and the rainfall is reliable, which, combined with their deep soils, allows them to produce crops that outperform most of our regions.

Sure, it gets a little chilly in winter, and there is the minor inconvenience of having to listen to the wailing of air raid sirens, but that little skirmish is coming to an end, and soon both sides will declare victory, redraw the boundaries, and life will go on.

So, starting with Ukraine, Australian farmers might want to follow in the well-trodden footsteps of American and European investors who have been making a killing in Ukraine since the fall of communism. For the past few decades, savvy farmer investors have quietly swooped in, buying up large swathes of Ukraine’s prime farmland in a veritable modern-day land rush, fuelled by high yields, low costs, and a welcoming regulatory environment—or as welcoming as an environment that occasionally hosts a tank or two can be.

Open up your real estate browser and take a peek at what’s on offer right now. There is the option of 50 per cent shareholding in 5,000 hectares for US$3.5 million, which works out to be $1,000 an acre in the Vinnytsya Region, average yield of 6 tonnes per hectare.

Not enough land for you? How about 23,000 hectares for US$35 million ($1,000 an acre) in the Odessa Region, with a historic average of 4 tonnes per hectare? To sweeten the deal it comes complete with a private railway line, 100,000-tonne silo, a dozen 400 hp Russian tractors, 24 John Deere headers, four American-made SP sprayers, and a fleet of 20 Russian KamAZ trucks. The best part is the payback period—it’s between one to three years. Try getting that kind of return on any WA farmland.

Add cheap labour to cheap land and high and reliable yields with a massive domestic market on the doorstep and it’s not a bad formula. Worried about management? Well take your pick of agronomists and accountants who speak English A$500 a week. As for farm workers, forget the shortage of farmhands in Australia; in Ukraine, there’s a steady supply of workers willing to get their hands dirty. Okay, the odd one might be missing a limb from a land mine, but when your John Deere can drive itself, one arm is one too many. The best bit is the mechanics in Ukraine won’t charge you an arm and a leg with average salaries around A$250 a week.

The neighbours might think you’ve lost it, but honestly, they probably thought the same thing when your grandparents bought land covered in mallee scrub. And look at it now—fortune favours the brave. Farmland in Ukraine is quarter to half the price of ours for land that yields double the amount. Forget building that retirement house for the olds in Perth send them to Ukraine to look after your new investment.

And hey, once they have harvested 5,000 hectares of grain, put 30,000 tonnes into the bin, and pocketed $7.5 million before costs (assuming a discount to $250 a tn, as shipping is a bit risky these days), they will look like the smartest person in the bomb shelter.

The best part is that since 2021, Ukraine President Zelensky has started lifting the restrictions on foreign freehold ownership – it helps when the country is broke – so you will be one of the first to become a local land baron and not a tenant farmer. Failing that, 50 year leases at A$200 ha per year for 4tn country and $300 for 6tn is always a option.

If your wife or mother says no way are they going to a war zone, but you can go if you like,  try them with the option of Russia.   Land is even cheaper over there.   Looking at the more marginal grain-growing regions, you can punt on 6,000 hectares in the Saratov region for less then the price of a new class 10 header at US$950,000 ($100 an acre) which has a 2.8 tonnes average. Too small for you? How about 12,000 hectares in the Penza region for US $3.375 million, again $100 an acre with a 2.5–3.5 tonnes per hectare long term average.

If you want to run your Esperance mates into the ground, I would recommend 1,200 hectares in the Stavropol region for US$960,000 (A$500 an acre) with yields in the 3.5–4 tonnes range, or the really, really good stuff in the Krasnodar region, where you can pick up 1,600 hectares for US$3,200 per hectare (A$2,000 an acre) averaging 5–5.5 tonnes.

As per property rights, just make sure your social media says lots of nice things about Putin and bags out the Americans, and you should be okay.

Out of interest, on my travels around the internet to put this together, if you want to know why our land prices keep going up, you can partially lay the blame at the open door policy of the federal government.

There are not many countries in the world where any Tom, Dick and Harry, or Mahommed, Zhand or Putri can buy up another country’s food security. Who cares, I hear you say, they can’t take it home with them.  

True, but I wonder what the threshold of the Australian public’s tolerance would be if we marched up from our current 1 in 10 ha owned by foreigners to 1 in 5 or 4  or 2.   At some stage the punters will say enough is enough and the government will have to legislate. My guess is it will be once they hit 1 in 5 ha or once the carbon farmers turn 10 per cent of the Wheatbelt back into trees, the local footy teams collapse and the revolt that will be driven by the farmers, but you know my views on that.

• Cameroon: Foreign investors limit $200,000
• Nigeria: Foreign investors limit 500 ha
• Sweden: Restricted
• South Africa: Restricted
• Estonia: Legal formalities
• Latvia: Restricted
• Lithuania: Restricted
• Brazil: 25 per cent of any region
• Bulgaria: Restricted
• Argentina: 25 per cent of any region
• Russia: Cap of 5 per cent of all farmland
• China: Totally restricted
• Saudi Arabia: Totally restricted
• Israel: No, unless you convert to Judaism
• Japan: No, unless you are fluent or married to a Japanese
• Indonesia: Restricted
• Uruguay: Unlimited