Sam Wan didn’t grow up in a farming family, and despite spending a childhood in suburban Sydney she is blazing a trail in the agriculture industry.
After years of study and experience, Ms Wan works as a wool broker and spends her days among Australia’s finest fleeces at the Elders auction room in Melbourne.
She credits her interest in working in the industry to her high school agriculture teacher at Nagle College Blacktown, in Sydney’s west.
“I had a brilliant teacher. We actually had a small farm at school, and he just went above and beyond,” she said.
And while she later tried studying agricultural science at university, it wasn’t quite right.
“Uni was a bit intense and I struggled a little bit with it so … I took the year off to do TAFE,” she said.
The decision paid off.
Armed with a Certificate IV in agriculture, hours of volunteering at ag shows and showing sheep on the weekends, wool auctioneering seemed a logical step.
Her job has taken her across the world, where she advocates for the quality of Australian fleece.
She is a winner of the Young Farming Champion, a Youth Ambassador for WoolProducers Australia, and has worked as a animal technician.
In 2020, Ms Wan travelled to China on a sponsored trip to attend an international wool event and to tour its textile industry.
Women fighting for equality
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Deputy Secretary Tess Bishop said the once male-dominated domain of agriculture was shifting as more women take up agricultural studies.
“An increasing number of women are achieving qualifications in agriculture, including agricultural science, animal husbandry and wool science,” Ms Bishop said.
Between 2016 and 2021, the number of women employed in agriculture grew by 7,105 workers, representing almost two-thirds of the overall expansion in the sector.
Women currently make up a third of the agricultural workforce, although they are strongly represented in management roles and hold nearly half of all positions on agricultural boards.
Ms Wan is one of an increasing number of women to take up wool brokering. In 2015, Cassie Baile from New England in NSW got her start at the Yenora wool selling complex, and Jo-Anne Bester has been brandishing the gavel in South Africa since 2018, the first women in that country to do so.
A way of life
Ms Wan’s work and home life now converge; she has bought her own farm an hour’s drive from Melbourne.
“My husband and I have had a bit of a tree change,” she said.
The couple have a flock of 99 sheep and have just completed shearing for the year.
Next on her list is learning animal husbandry and how to castrate her sheep.
“We’ve just picked up our own tractor and while I don’t know the ins and outs, I at least feel I’m not going in completely blind,” she said.
“So it’s been an adventure and it’s still continuing.”
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