Eligibility audit — Yarrabin Pastoral Pty Ltd
Application AGD-FIF-2026-00417 · NSW Farm Innovation Fund · 19 May 2026
Pass rate (in-scope)
Criterion coverage
All eligibility themes ≥ 60 % coverage
Verdict distribution
- Pass 7
- Conditional 1
- Fail 0
- Out of scope 2
Subject parcel
Overall rationale
All spatially-assessable criteria are met (7/8). Bushfire risk is low (Veg Cat 3, no habitable works) and is addressed by two simple conditions on dam-access and silo siting. The two out-of-scope criteria (primary-producer status, repayment capacity) sit with RAA Credit. Recommendation: APPROVE WITH CONDITIONS, contingent on RAA Credit serviceability sign-off.
Eligibility criteria — verdict ledger
Each criterion is matched to the NSW Farm Innovation Fund guidelines, evaluated against the application package and the property's authoritative datasets, and given a single verdict with a citation that justifies it.
Applicant is a NSW primary producer
Sole trader, partnership, company or trust whose principal business is primary production and who derives, or will derive, the majority of gross income from primary production carried out on the subject land.
Primary-producer status is an applicant declaration. Property is in RU1 zone with 1 dwelling and modified-pasture land use — consistent with a working primary production enterprise, but the applicant's income mix is outside the spatial dataset.
- public.lot_profiles.zone_code = 'RU1'
- actual_land_use = '3.2.0 Grazing modified pastures'
Property is located in NSW
Subject land must be entirely within New South Wales.
Subject parcel F/DP23769 is in Spring Ridge, Liverpool Plains Shire Council, NSW — confirmed by NSW Digital Cadastral Database (DCDB).
- NSW DCDB — cadastral_lots_full / lot_profiles row 3310755
- Suburb: Spring Ridge, Postcode: 2343
Property is suitable for the proposed primary production use
Land capability, zoning and overlays support the proposed enterprise. BSAL and LSC Class 1–4 are positive signals.
Zone RU1 Primary Production explicitly permits extensive agriculture, intensive plant agriculture and intensive livestock. Land Capability Class 3 supports cropping with appropriate management. Parcel is mapped as Biophysical Strategic Agricultural Land (BSAL) — a positive signal indicating premium ag suitability.
- Liverpool Plains LEP 2011, Land Use Table — Zone RU1
- NSW DPI Land & Soil Capability v4 — Class 3
- SEPP (Mining, Petroleum Production and Extractive Industries) 2007 — BSAL Mapping
Project delivers permanent on-farm capital works
Eligible works include water infrastructure, soil & pasture improvement, permanent plantings, fencing for managed grazing, energy efficiency works, and storage infrastructure.
All four project components — water storage, reticulation, perennial pasture establishment, grain storage — are listed as eligible permanent capital works under the FIF guidelines.
- NSW Rural Assistance Authority — FIF Guidelines §3.1 Eligible Works
Project contributes to long-term productivity
Demonstrable carrying capacity uplift, yield uplift, or reduction in input cost per unit output. Baseline must be quantified.
Modelled carrying-capacity uplift 4.5 → 7.8 DSE/ha on the 200 ha renovation block (73% uplift). Whole-of-farm weighted average gross margin uplift +79%. Methodology referenced to NSW DPI Profitable Pastures and AgriFutures gross margin budgets.
- NSW DPI Profitable Pastures (2024)
- AgriFutures Mixed Farming Gross Margins (2024)
Project contributes to drought preparedness
Stored water capacity, fodder reserve, or drought-tolerant perennial pasture component such that the enterprise can withstand a defined dry sequence.
Stored water capacity 18 → 118 ML; stock-water-days under no-rainfall scenario 95 → 410 days; 800 t grain reserve added. Modelled survival of decile-1 12-month dry sequence without forced destocking.
- BoM 30-year rainfall grid — site mean 648.5 mm/yr
- Drought test: 12-month rolling ≤ 425 mm (≤ decile 1)
Project contributes to sustainable land use
Reduces bare soil, increases ground cover, increases carbon stock, or reduces nutrient export. Quantitative baseline + projected uplift required.
Projected bare soil 33.7% → 14.0%, green cover 16.1% → 38.0%, soil carbon stock 3.14 → 4.65 tCO₂e/ha (uplift 747 tCO₂e whole-of-property). Methodology aligns with ERF default-values method for soil carbon.
- DEA Fractional Cover (Sentinel-2, 2024) — baseline
- Emissions Reduction Fund Method — Estimating soil carbon (default values)
No conflicting regulatory overlays
No heritage listing, contaminated land, acid sulfate constraint, biodiversity offset, or threatened ecological community on the works footprint.
No heritage listing, no contaminated site, no acid sulfate constraint, no salinity overlay, no biodiversity/TEC mapping. Groundwater not flagged as vulnerable. Composite spatial risk score 15 (tier: low) — only contributor is bushfire vegetation category.
- public.lot_risk_composite — composite_score = 15, tier = low
Bushfire risk mitigation considered
If the property is on Bushfire Prone Land, the project design must reference RFS Planning for Bushfire Protection 2019 (PBP 2019) requirements for any habitable structures or critical infrastructure.
Parcel is on Bushfire Prone Land (Vegetation Category 3). No habitable structures or accommodation is part of the project scope, so PBP 2019 Schedule does not directly bind. CONDITION: dam access tracks must include a fire-truck-grade turnaround within 200 m of each storage; grain silo siting must maintain a 30 m Asset Protection Zone.
- NSW RFS Planning for Bushfire Protection 2019 (PBP 2019)
- Bushfire Prone Land Map 2023 — Veg Cat 3
Repayment capacity demonstrated
Three years of trading accounts, projected cash flow showing serviceability under stress assumptions, security position acceptable to RAA.
Repayment serviceability is assessed from applicant trading accounts and projected cash flow — outside the spatial dataset. AgGrantDSS does not certify financial serviceability.
- FIF Guidelines §4.2 Financial Assessment — RAA Credit team
Conditions of approval (machine-generated)
If RAA Credit signs off on serviceability, the machine recommendation is to approve with the following conditions, drawn from the conditional verdict on Criterion C9 (bushfire) and the standard FIF instrument conditions.
- Bushfire — dam access. All-weather access tracks to each storage dam must include a fire-truck-grade turnaround within 200 m of the storage. Compliance evidence: post-works survey, due within 60 days of practical completion.
- Bushfire — silo Asset Protection Zone. Grain silo must maintain a 30 m managed-pasture APZ on all sides for the life of the loan. Annual photographic compliance log to RAA.
- Annual sustainability report. Submit Sentinel-2 fractional cover summary (bare soil %, green cover %) annually until projected baseline is reached. Free service via AgGrantDSS.
- Standard FIF instrument conditions per Schedule 2 of the NSW Farm Innovation Fund loan agreement apply unmodified.
Data provenance
All spatial verdicts were derived from the following authoritative datasets. The dataset row that justifies each verdict is cited inline above.
| Layer | Organisation | Dataset | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lot boundary & identity | NSW Spatial Services (DCS) | NSW Digital Cadastral Database (DCDB) | High |
| Land & Soil Capability (LSC class) | NSW DPI (Environment & Heritage) | Land & Soil Capability Mapping v4 | High |
| Biophysical Strategic Agricultural Land | NSW DPI | BSAL Map (SEPP Mining, Petroleum Production & Extractive Industries 2007) | High |
| Zoning & permissibility | NSW Department of Planning | Liverpool Plains LEP 2011 — zoning layer | High |
| Climate (rainfall) | Bureau of Meteorology | 30-year mean annual rainfall grid (1km) | High |
| Land use | ABARES | Catchment Scale Land Use of Australia (CLUM) 2023 | Medium |
| Vegetation & soil cover | Geoscience Australia / DEA | Digital Earth Australia Fractional Cover (Sentinel-2, 2024) | Medium |
| Bushfire prone land | NSW Rural Fire Service | Bushfire Prone Land Map (2023) | High |