Higher land prices are making a "hell of a difference" when it comes to non-farming siblings in farm succession, according to Meridan Agriculture founding director Mike Stephens.
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Mr Stephens said the upswing in farm prices in recent years has led to more and more non-farming siblings looking for their slice of the pie.
He made the comments while speaking at the recent Better Beef conference in Ballarat.
Mr Stephens had spent decades advising Australian farm families as they navigated their succession journey.
"It is a major issue," he highlighted.
He explained that where a standard Wimmera farm, for example, might have been worth $4 million 20 years ago, it was now worth about $20m today.
The farm's assets had also increased in value from $1m to $2m.
He said such a farm back then was just managing to keep a family going, with one sibling returned to the farm and working on it.
He said other siblings may have gone to Melbourne and were making their own, off-farm living.
Mr Stephens said as the farm wasn't worth too much money, "it wasn't a big argument".
Now this had totally changed.
He said these non-farming siblings were returning for what they felt was their fair slice of the farm pie.
"Anybody that gets into any agreements about that now, make sure that they've got independent legal advice that says 'I understood what I agreed to' so that there's a fire wall there for 20 years time when they start coming back and making a claim," he told farmers.
While that may be a negative consequence of the changed land market, Mr Stephens said overall, succession was becoming more and more spoken about.
"There are more families in which it is not taboo," he said.
"Certainly there is a growing realisation that [succession] has to be implemented.
"It has moved on."
However, he said the main things blocking healthy succession discussions remained the same.
"There's still a whole lot of families where that conversation just doesn't happen because it's too hard," he said.
He said parents still shied away from conversations where they needed to tell one child they weren't getting what they may have expected, for example.
"Who wants to have that conversation if they can avoid it?" he asked.
Mr Stephens encouraged any farming couple considering their next steps with succession to break it down into small parts.
He said they should draw out a timeline of one year, five years and 10 years from now.
After that, they should write down what they wanted to see out of their kitchen window for each of these three time frames.
Similarly, they should then discuss and write down how they might like to spend their time and finally, how they'd like to be remembered.
Once those things were decided, he said succession conversations became much easier.
Ultimately, he said it had to work for the current farm owners.
"Someone has to take control," he said.
