00:05On mornings like this, when the tide is low and there's barely a breath of wind, here
00:11on the Clyde River at Batemans Bay in New South Wales, it's easy to see why Ewan McCash
00:17is an oyster farmer.
00:19Oh, this is a great lifestyle, a great place to have a family, it's a good longer term
00:25call.
00:27But it's not easy, and all hands are on deck.
00:31Yeah, so like with oyster farming, we don't feed them, we don't treat them, but it is quite
00:37labour intensive job in terms of, like on our farm we have maybe 40,000 oyster baskets
00:44and the guys are handling like 500 to even a thousand a day, and they can be picked up
00:51and put down in any one of like 250 locations on the river.
00:56Like most farming, it takes a lot of money.
01:00It's probably a lot less than normal agriculture, but it's pretty capital intensive in terms
01:05of to actually grow oysters, we need like plastic baskets or cages to grow them in.
01:10So it costs about $100,000, probably $150,000 a hectare to set up and grow oysters.
01:18Ewan says finding that capital has been a challenge, particularly because in this industry, oysters
01:25are grown on leases issued by the state government.
01:28We can't borrow against that, the banks don't recognise that.
01:32So traditionally, historically, I've borrowed against my own family house to fund the farm,
01:38and that's generally how farmers in this industry will borrow money if they can.
01:42Now, an app known as Invest in Your Farmer, or IF, is helping.
01:49The app allows farmers like Ewan to have access to capital, and at the same time gives investors
01:56the ability to buy into their own little slice of farming from their phone.
02:01It enables people to basically buy a portion of my oyster crop, and I'll farm it on their behalf,
02:08and sell it on their behalf, and they get the benefit by being an oyster farmer.
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