DOUG Shears (left) is best known for taking over a group of rundown cereal companies and transforming them into Uncle Toby's, which he sold to Goodman Fielder in 1992 for $330m.

He has come a long way since starting a farm supplies company 34 years ago at Lilydale, on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Today, the 55-year-old chairman and owner of ICM Australia, a major private agribusiness company, is one of the country's richest men, worth an estimated $140m, according to Business Review Weekly.

Mr Shears likes to keep his business dealings private, but he has attracted widespread media interest in some dramatic dust-ups with the boards of several rural cooperatives while trying to take strategic stakes in them.

He has stridently opposed genetically modified crops and allowing foreign companies to take majority stakes in Australian food companies.

His company ICM has interests in big pastoral and horticultural activities and food and beverage manufacturing and processing.

Among its interests is a 22,000-head feedlot at Peechelba in northern Vic., and the 20,000ha diversified property Cowl Cowl at Hillston in south western NSW.

Cowl Cowl, one of the biggest spray irrigation farms in the world, was bought in 1974 as part of a plan to control all aspects of production in the food chain ­ from farm to branded product. Mr Shears is also chief executive of Australia's biggest fruit juice group Berri Ltd, in which ICM has a 55pc stake.

In February, there was speculation the firm was considering a public float.

In the 1980s Mr Shears attempted to gain strategic stakes ­ before making a takeover bid ­ in several cooperatives involved in dairying, fruit, grain and livestock to build an Australian-owned food processing and trading company capable of dealing with overseas multi-nationals. But the plan failed to reach fruition.

As the biggest single shareholder in the fertiliser cooperative Pivot, Mr Shears fought an acrimonious court battle for more control, which endured for six years, until 1992.

Mr Shears, through ICM, remains the single biggest shareholder.

Pivot is exploring merger options with other fertiliser companies. But according to Mr Shears, if Pivot had taken his advice 10 years ago it would be leading the rationalisation in the industry, not following it.

He said Pivot was an example of a business that should have been participating in mergers and acquisitions in the late 1980s.