IF Don Taylor's original career goals had gone to plan he'd be flying jumbos with Qantas, not sitting in the board room hot seat trying to outmanoeuvre corporate raiders with hungry eyes on locally-grown agribusiness success story, GrainCorp.
In fact, back in the 1970s the south-west Queensland farm boy narrowly missed selection as a trainee pilot with the airline.
Instead, life took a series of different high flying and long haul routes, eventually landing him in his current job as chairman of a farmer-based grain business that in recent years has become one of the share market's best performers.
GrainCorp's growth and strategic position on the global grain processing map has a list of suitors, including Japanese trading houses Sumitomo and Marubini, and Chinese interests, tipped to outbid the $2.7 billion takeover move by US commodity trader Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
Mr Taylor's board last week politely rejected ADM's supposedly friendly $11.75 a share offer, but analysts expect the multi-national (nine times the size of GrainCorp) is biding time before moving again to defend its newly-acquired 15 per cent stake.
A smart accountant, a successful farmer and still an aviation buff, these days Don Taylor the board director often flies himself to work at GrainCorp's Sydney head office, or other work commitments in Queensland or Victoria.
It's a two-and-a-half hour flight to Sydney in his single propeller Mooney M20 from his Queensland beef and cropping property.
A 1000-metre bitumen airstrip stretches across a paddock a short taxiing distance from sheds, assorted farm machinery and the main house on the 4860-hectare "Parkhurst".
The one-time sheep-only enterprise about 100 kilometres north of Goondiwindi was carved from brigalow, belah scrub and melonhole country - liberally scattered with prickly pear - by his parents Max and Lorna.
They moved to the district in 1949, paying almost $5 a hectare (a pound an acre) for 10,000ha of untamed leasehold land and a few fences, only to have it resumed and subdivided by the State Government for closer settlement two years later.
The Taylors and their three sons were left to rebuild their down-sized 3600ha allotment, despite a debt burden left from their initial land purchase, and no compensation for losing much of the original holding.
The farm's heavily timbered variable grey-clay soils transitioned to carrying cattle in the 1960s, then were further cleared for 2400ha of wheat, oats and sorghum cropping and more recently, cotton.
Now run by Mr Taylor and his wife Deb, the "Parkhurst" enterprise has been streamlined to fattening young Angus and Shorthorn steers, with the cropping focus restricted to 485ha of grazing oats, a similar area of forage sorghum and 180ha of irrigated cotton.
A 1500 megalitre-capacity irrigation dam fed by runoff from the farm's paddocks has filled four times since the Taylors took the punt to build it in 1997 to boost their cotton productivity. Last summer's crop yielded a respectable average above 10 bales/ha.
Although he chairs Australia's biggest and most diversified grain business Mr Taylor has not grown a paddock of wheat or sorghum in five years.
"I just don't have the time to put into growing grain crops at the moment," he said.
Since he took the reins in 2005 the GrainCorp business has almost trebled its size, despite struggling for earnings during the recent drought.
In 2009 it executed a bold $757 million purchase of the world's fourth biggest malt business United Malt Holdings (now called GrainCorp Malt), with operations across Europe, North America and Australia.
Last month the company expanded further to become Australia's largest integrated edible oils processor and refiner paying $472m in a double takeover of trans-Tasman oilseed crusher and trader Gardner Smith Group and Goodman Fielder's local Integro Foods commercial oils operations.
The past two years have also seen GrainCorp appoint popular and prudent businesswoman Alison Watkins as managing director; open a grain trading office in Germany, and move to strengthen its activities in the deregulating Canadian wheat market.
Good weather conditions have also helped its share price treble to around $12.20 in just a few years.
In 2009 GrainCorp only rated in the top 300 of Australian Securities Exchange-listed companies - now it's around number 70.
It's no coincidence Mr Taylor's chairmanship has fostered careful international growth and diversification strategies.
The boy from the Queensland bush was blessed with an impressive early business career as a chartered accountant in Sydney, Brisbane and Singapore with former global accounting and business consultancy giant Arthur Andersen.
By the time he was 27 Don Taylor had benefited from a raft of specialist training experiences, including stints at the company's Chicago head office, and was running a division assisting emerging enterprises on accounting, tax and business law issues.
But while the fast-tracked corporate life was stimulating and exposed him to big business bosses across Australia and Asia, he opted to return home to the farm (and his ailing father) rather than wait out his turn in the queue to become a partner in the firm.
"If you're born in the bush and you like it, you like the life," Mr Taylor said.
"I don't like the droughts, but I like just about everything else that goes with farming."
"I love growing things."
Heading home in 1978 also opened the door to involvement in the burgeoning Queensland Grain Growers Association (QGGA) where he gradually took lead roles in his local Moonie branch, then as district president and a State general councillor.
It was fortuitous that he did.
In 1983 his accounting and business experience came to the rescue of the farmer organisation when it plunged into near-insolvency after its grain trading division was caught by months of toxic currency trades leaving multiple million dollar losses.
Mr Taylor became a lead force rallying farmers to stump up the cash for a $1m trust fund needed to give QGGA enough background liquidity to keep its banks and creditors at bay.
Plans were put in place to sell QGGA's Brisbane oilseed crushing plant and sorghum marketing business, the dollar also conveniently rallied to assist the dud currency trades and, eventually, creditors received about 78 cents in the dollar - well above original expectations of just 28c.
He admits to having many frustrations and regrets about his involvement in agripolitics, which included a later stint on Grains Council of Australia in the 1990s.
But those experiences also set him on course to his current role and confirmed his understanding what makes GrainCorp's farmer customers (and shareholders) tick.
"Farmers are very passionate about their farming businesses and fair enough - there's a lot at stake for them," he said.
"The cost of failure is very high, the economic environment is very challenging, its a very high cost business.
"Farmer's businesses are also very closely aligned with what GrainCorp does. We don't make money unless they make money.
"We've got a lot at stake, too, including our extensive country infrastructure, so making both our businesses stronger is very important."
