Crop and seasonal finance in Australia: bridging planting to harvest
With cropping, the money goes out long before it comes back. You pay for seed, fertiliser, chemical and fuel months before a single grain is sold, and the hard part is getting through the months between paying for it all and selling the crop. This season that gap is wider than it has been in years: input costs are up, grain prices have come back off their highs, and the crop itself is forecast to be smaller. This is how seasonal crop finance bridges it. Aurelius Private are private lending brokers; we place these facilities with lenders who understand agribusiness, we do not lend our own money.
The squeeze is worse this season
Input costs have climbed. Fertiliser is the single biggest line in a cropping budget, and with chemical it makes up more than 70% of a crop's variable costs. Urea is back over $1,000 a tonne, fuel and fertiliser have gone up around 20% in some markets, and growers are reporting input bills of roughly $220 a hectare against $160 only three years ago.[2][3] At the same time grain prices have eased off their recent peaks, so there is little room to pass those costs on.
The crop is tighter too. ABARES has forecast the 2026-27 winter crop down 21% to 54.5 million tonnes, with wheat down 26% and the planted area at its smallest since 2019-20, as higher costs and a dry outlook pull country out of production. The Bureau of Meteorology is giving major cropping regions a 60 to 80% chance of below-average winter rain.[1] More cost going in and a smaller, riskier crop coming out is a cash flow problem before the season even starts.
How seasonal crop finance works
A seasonal facility funds the inputs, up to 100% of the cost of seed, fertiliser, chemical and fuel, and is secured against the growing crop itself through a registered interest on the Personal Property Securities Register, not carved out of the equity in your land. Because the crop is the security, the finance can cover the full planting rather than leaving you to find it from working capital.
Repayment is timed to the harvest. The facility runs principal and interest through to when the crop is sold, with no monthly repayment while it is in the ground, so nothing comes out of your cash flow during the growing season. When the grain or the cotton is sold, the facility clears. It works the same way as livestock finance, matched to when the money actually comes in rather than a set monthly repayment.
Holding grain for a better price
There is a second use that matters even more in a year like this. A lot of growers finish harvest cash-poor and sell grain straight off the header to cover bills, often into the weakest part of the market. A lender can advance against harvested grain sitting in storage, which frees up the cash tied up in it and lets you hold it back instead of selling at harvest. In a season where many growers are already selling down old grain just to pay the bills, waiting for a better price rather than selling under pressure can be worth real money.
Where the bank falls short
Banks do fund cropping, but on their terms and their timeline. They price rural security conservatively, cap the loan-to-value ratio, and are slow at exactly the point in the calendar when seed has to go in the ground. Miss the planting window waiting on a credit decision and the season is gone. Seasonal finance is faster, secured on the crop rather than the farm, and assessed on the enterprise, which is why growers use it to get the crop in when the bank cannot move in time.
Land, livestock and season, funded together
Most cropping operations are not one thing. Seasonal facilities sit alongside farmland finance, which private ag lenders write to around 65% of value, and livestock finance for any stock in the rotation, so a mixed farm can be funded as one structure rather than three separate loans competing for the same security. Where you are buying country to crop, our first mortgage finance covers the land while the seasonal facility funds the crop that goes on it, and working capital finance can bridge a pure operating gap. The full picture is on our agricultural finance page.
What a lender needs to see
Seasonal finance is backed by the crop and the country, so a lender wants a realistic crop plan, the land it is going on, and a clear path to sale. Facilities generally run from $100,000 to several million, and a clean file can be set up in around a fortnight, fast enough to fund a planting. A bank knock-back is not a mark against you here; it is usually the reason the call was made.
If you are funding a planting, holding grain, or carrying a season, send us the scenario. We will tell you the same day what a private lender will fund and how it is structured.
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Send through the scenario. You’ll hear back the same day with who would fund it and roughly what it costs. If it doesn’t stack up as it stands, we’ll say so and tell you what would need to change.