The brother of Vietnam's richest person, media boss Pham Nhat Vu branched out into the Australian beef industry in 2016 by purchasing the Northern Territory's Vermelha Station for a cool AU$18 million ($13 million/£9.8m). He now controls 203,900 hectares, according to The Weekly Times.
America's largest homebuilder D. R. Horton was founded by Donald Horton more than 35 years ago. Over the years, the firm's founder has been buying up colossal swathes of land in the southwest of the US and now owns a total of 205,746 hectares.
The family-owned Westervelt Company has been in business for 136 years. The firm, which was established in 1884 by Herbert Westervelt, is one of America's leading land resource organisations with a total of 209,627 hectares of forest in five US states.
The Martin family is carrying on the work started by the late Roy O. Martin Jr., who massively expanded the timber firm set up by his father. The ever-expanding lumber enterprise is headed by Roy O. Martin Jr.'s son Roy O. Martin III, and owns 221,363 hectares in America's Deep South, according to the Land Report.
As major landowners the Stimson family goes way back – the Stimson Lumber Company was established before the Civil War, and the clan now controls an extensive portfolio of forested land in Montana, Oregon and Idaho, according to the 2020 Land Report.
One of the world's youngest billionaires, Hugh Grosvenor inherited the vast Grosvenor Estate in 2016 upon the death of his father, Gerald Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster. Through the estate, the 30-year-old billionaire owns 57,000 hectares in the UK, including swathes of central London, such as 121 hectares in Belgravia alone. However, the Grosvenor Estate's land and property portfolio extends beyond the UK, with an estimated further 168,000 hectares of land in the USA, Canada, Australia and France.
O'Connor clan patriarch Thomas O'Connor, nicknamed 'The Texas Cattle King', lucked out big time when he was granted 1,192 hectares of land in Victoria County, Texas back in 1834. Over the years, the Irish immigrant's descendants have increased the family's holdings to an impressive 237,874 hectares.
Andrei Korovaiko is the man behind Pokrovsky Concern, which is made up of more than 35 enterprises that deal in sugar, electrical equipment, property, investment and meat processing. The Concern sprawls across 242,000 hectares of the Southern Federal District of Russia, according to Large Scale Agriculture.
The Ford family patriarch, Kenneth Ford, came from humble beginnings and started out by establishing a small sawmill in Roseburg, Oregon back in 1936. Fast-forward to 2020 and Ford's descendants own a total of just under 243,000 hectares of forest in Western Oregon and Northern California.
Starting small, Dr Howell Lykes shut down his medical surgery in the 1870s and moved to Florida to take over his family's modest 202-hectare ranch. Today, the doctor's heirs control 248,880 hectares in the Sunshine State and Texas.
Together, the National Trust and National Trust for Scotland own 326,000 hectares of land in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which makes these conservation charities two of the UK's biggest private landowners.
Viktor Dimitriev heads up Vasilina, making him the 10th biggest landowner in Russia, according to Large Scale Agriculture. Vasilina's business is crop and flour production, and its land spans 380,000 hectares across the Samara region of the country.
Greg and Sharon Vickers own the Napier Pastoral Company, which made it first acquisitions in the Northern Territory in Australia in 2016 by buying 38,200-hectare Delmore Downs and 83,300-hectare Delny. In 2019 the pair added the 275,200 hectares of Pine Hill Station to their holdings. These stations are in addition to their land in the south, meaning that the couple likely owns far more than 396,700 hectares.
Like many religious groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a major landowner. The Mormon church reportedly owns more than 405,000 hectares in the continental US and became Florida's largest private landowner in 2014, according to Reuters.
Entrepreneur Craig Astill's sustainability-focused Caason Group is the sole owner of Aileron Pastoral Holdings. The farming company owns and operates 408,199 hectares in and around the Alice Springs area in central Australia.
One of the richest people in Russia, businessman Kirill Minovalov controls Avangard-Agro, one of the world's largest malt producers. The company owns four malting plants in Russia and Germany, which add up to 448,000 hectares of land.
Former Russian oil magnate Sergei Kukura and his son Alexei acquired assets of the Swedish holding Black Earth Farming in 2017 through their Volgo Don Agroinvest company. The deal more than doubled their landholdings, which are now 451,000 hectares according to Large Scale Agriculture. The swathes of land are mainly in the Kursk and Tambov regions.
Publicity-shy billionaire Brad Kelley made his money from tobacco, selling his Commonwealth Brands company in 2001 for $1 billion (£690m). The reclusive tycoon owns 461,335 hectares of ranching land in Kentucky, Texas, Florida and New Mexico, according to the Land Report. He also has a cool net worth of $2.6 billion (£1.9bn).
Together Vladimir Evtushenkov and the Louis-Dreyfus family own Steppe Agroholding and RZ Agro, which have a combined hectarage of 474,800 hectares, according to Large Scale Agriculture. Steppe alone is one of the largest agricultural holdings in south Russia, producing more than 55,000 tonnes of milk, 20,000 tonnes of apples and 700,000 tonnes of wheat every year.
Ukrainian businessman Oleg Bakhmatyuk owns 100% of UkrLandFarming, one of the eastern European country's largest agricultural businesses. The firm has approximately 500,000 hectares of highly productive land, according to Large Scale Agriculture, although its pastures have decreased by around 140,000 hectares in the last six years, partly as a result of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian federation.
Subway co-founder Peter Buck made most of his $1.7 billion (£1.2bn) fortune via his popular fast food chain and invested a good amount of it in land. The billionaire's Tall Timber Trust controls 374,000 hectares of forestland in Maine alone, which makes up a big chunk of his 500,191-hectare holdings.
In control of 514,000 hectares of farmland, Ukrainian farming giant Kernel is the country's largest farm and one of the world's leading producers of sunflower oil. The firm's major shareholder is its founder: grain entrepreneur Andriy Verevskyi.
The Argentinian agricultural company Cross Pacific Investments bought three top end cattle stations in 2019; Manubullo Station in June, Scott Creek in August and Stuart Downs in November, all in the Northern Territory in Australia. The acquisitions came at a total cost of $43 million (£31.5m) and span more than 540,000 hectares. The company is backed by the Buratovich family, who have been farming in Argentina for more than a century and are also involved in projects across Brazil, Uruguay and the United States.
Businessman and philanthropist Vadim Moshkovich has a 75% controlling stake in Rusagro, which specialises in pork and sugar, and owns and farms a total of 609,000 hectares in Russia, according to Large Scale Agriculture. Moshkovich also owns 2,580 hectares of prime real estate in Moscow via his Masshtab property development firm. Property has been an immensely successful venture for Moshkovich, and he currently has a net worth of $2.4 billion (£1.7bn), according to Forbes.
Australia's most renowned barrister Allan Myers doesn’t just enforce the law of the land, he also owns a lot of it too. Cattle farming is the main preoccupation at the eminent lawyer’s Dunkeld Pastoral Company, which has holdings totalling more than 623,000 hectares in Western Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory. Myers also holds shares in the Tipperary Group of Stations, which spans 386,000 hectares, although it is unclear exactly how much of the land the barrister has a claim to. It was also rumoured in June 2020 that Myers bought 1,273 hectares of Devon Park, in Dunkeld, western Australia for AU$14.2 million ($11m/£8m) at auction, but it's not been publicly confirmed if Myers was the mystery buyer.
Controversially, the former Russian agriculture minister Aleksandr Tkachev and his relatives control the second largest Russian producer of raw milk, Agrokomplex. The holding currently manages 660,000 hectares of land, according to Large Scale Agriculture.
Kazakhstan's Agrocenter Astana company controls an estimated 700,000 hectares in the central Asian country. The humongous grain business has a total of 27 mega-farms in Kazakhstan, as well as several major grain elevators and bakery plants.
Tornator is a Finnish forestry firm that owns more than 700,000 hectares of wooded land in Finland, Estonia and Romania. The company is controlled by a number of major Finnish institutional investors, and also has a large real estate holding, suggesting that its hectarage is quite a bit larger than just its forestry operations.
North Star Pastoral, which has 774,500 hectares of land in Australia including the immense Limbunya Station in the Northern Territory, is owned by Colin Ross. The cattleman hit the headlines in 2017 for his opposition to fracking in Australia and late last year announced that his holdings would be shrinking considerably as he plans to sell Limbunya and Maryfield stations. The stations are expected to fetch more than AU$150 million ($116m/£83m).
Argentine real estate baron Eduardo Elsztain is the country's leading property developer and heads agricultural company Cresud, which runs farms in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. In total, the land accounts for around 800,000 hectares. Elsztain also has a bulging urban portfolio, and owns most of the malls in Argentina.
Billionaire CNN founder Ted Turner is America's fourth biggest private landowner, according to the 2020 Land Report 100. The media mogul controls just under 809,400 hectares of land across the US and runs the world's largest private herd of bison – an incredible 45,000 animals.
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Olzha is another Kazakhstani company taking up huge amounts of land, and is estimated to operate across 840,000 hectares, according to Large Scale Agriculture. The company was founded in 1995 and specialises in the transportation of petroleum products.
Dating back to 1890, the Reed family's Green Diamond Resource Company owns nearly 850,000 hectares of land in eight states across the US's Pacific Northwest and south, according to the 2020 Land Report, having acquired an additional 118,000 hectares in the last year. The Reeds are all about sustainable forestry and conservation, and have pledged to only harvest 2% of their timberland every year.
The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America and College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA CREF) has been named as the biggest global investor in agriculture by AgJournal, owning 850,000 hectares worldwide. A large portion of that land is in Australia, where TIAA CREF owns 286,000 hectares. The non-profit corporation also owns more than 243,000 hectares of farmland in Brazil.
The Emmerson family runs Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), one of America's largest lumber producers and the largest private landowner in California. In total, the family owns 866,000 hectares of forested land in the Golden State and Washington.
The family-owned Italian retailer is Argentina's largest private landowner, with hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in Patagonia. However, these lands have also been claimed by the indigenous Mapuche people, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). The Benettons claimed to be unaware of this when they purchased the land in the 1990s.
The largest private landowner in the US according to the 2020 Land Report 100, Liberty's John Malone owns a staggering 890,300 hectares of land in America. The tycoon, who is worth $7.9 billion (£5.7bn), controls mammoth tracts of forested land in Maine, as well as ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado.
Russian tycoon Igor Khudokormov is the country's largest non-state landowner. The multi-millionaire controls sugar producer Prodimex and greenhouse facility Agrokultura, which combined are 892,200 hectares, as reported by Large Scale Agriculture.
Scott Harris has hit the Australian headlines time and time again for his controversial plans to clear thousands of hectares of bushland to expand his agricultural portfolio. Harris had permission to clear 58,000 of his enormous 931,000-hectare Strathmore Station in 2015, but came under fire for threatening animal habitats and damaging wetland in what was one of the country’s biggest single land clearings. Harris also owns Kingvale Station, and plans to clear more than 1,800 hectares of its land were strongly objected to given the plot’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.
Investors in Australian sustainable timber company New Forests, which include Japan's Mitsui & Co., ultimately own the firm's more than 950,000 hectares of forest in Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, and the USA.
Filipino banker and property mogul Romeo Roxas has built a formidable real estate portfolio in Australia in recent years, including the addition of the 560,000-hectare Murray Downs Station and the 265,000-hectare Epenarra Station in 2015. Roxas already had significant agricultural interests in Australia, including more than 60,000 hectares in New South Wales, as well as the 80,000 hectares across the districts of Aurora and Quezon in the Philippines, bringing the property mogul’s portfolio to more than 965,000 hectares.
Chairman of Australia's TV network Seven, Kerry Stokes is passionate about agriculture as well as media. He currently owns around a million hectares of farmland in Western and South Australia, after selling one of his properties on Kangaroo Island last year.
This moneyed Australian family owns and operates over a million hectares of land Down Under, according to The Weekly Times. However, head of the family Tom Brinkworth died in August 2020 at the age of 83. His wife Patricia and the remaining family now control 100 holdings in total, from small farms to epic stretches of pasture that stretch as far as the eye can see. This equates to more than one million hectares of land in Australia, of which 250,000 are in the south east.
South America's largest landowner, Chile's Forestal Arauco (CELCO) owns plantations in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, which amount to more than one million hectares. The heirs of the late Anacleto Angelini are the majority shareholders in the firm.
Viktor Linnik (pictured here on the right with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev) and his brother Aleksandr Linnik own the leading Russian meat producer and exporter Miratorg. The company controls just over one million hectares across the country, according to Large Scale Agriculture.
Backed by one of South Africa’s richest people, Giovanni Ravazzotti, and his daughter Luciana Ravazzotti Langenhoven and son-in-law Pierre Langenhoven, Rallen Australia is becoming a prominent player in the world of Australian landownership. In February 2020, the company acquired two major cattle stations, Tanumbirini and Forrest Hill, at a cost of $70 million (£51.2m). The stations stretch across 559,370 hectares and make up the bulk of the company’s extensive portfolio, which also includes Kalala Station, purchased for $58 million (£42.4m), and Mt McMinn and Big River stations, acquired for $7.5 million (£5.5m) and $5.5 million (£4m) respectively. Rallen currently owns 1.09 million hectares of land, with an eye to acquire more in the next decade, as reported by Financial Review.
Chilean forestry company CMPC has more than 1.1 million hectares in Chile, Argentina and Brazil through its subsidiary, Forestal Mininco. The firm is owned by the late founder Eliodoro Matte's three billionaire children, including son Jorge (pictured).
One of Australia’s richest people with a fortune of $19.4 billion (£13.9bn), mining legend Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest has significant livestock farming interests. After purchasing another two stations at a cost of AU$30 million ($23.2m/£17m) last year, the holdings, which include Western Australia's Minderoo and Brickhouse Cattle Stations, total 1.12 million hectares, an area more or less the size of Qatar. In 2020 Forrest found himself in the spotlight after his attempt to appeal a federal court decision in the High Court that indigenous Yindjibarndi people owned the rights to the Pilbara mine in Western Australia was rejected and the case was not heard.
The Hewitt family have been pastoralists in Queensland for generations and the clan still controls numerous land holdings across the Australian state, as well as in the Northern Territory and New South Wales. The family’s extensive portfolio of 16 stations and aggregations includes the 185,700-hectare Kalabity and the 127,337-hectare Tandou Station in Alice Springs, and after the 2017 purchase of the Hale pastoral stations, Ambalindum and Numery, the family portfolio expanded to 1.2 million hectares.
The son of the late Australian wool baron Sir William Gunn, Bill Gunn is the founder and majority shareholder in the Gunn Agri Partners trust, which runs several large-scale cattle stations across Australia totalling around 1.3 million hectares.
The sprawling cattle business founded by the late Australian cattle baron Graeme Acton (pictured) is now owned by his family. The Acton Land and Cattle Company owned 1.58 million hectares when the Queenslander passed away in 2014, and the family has since formed Australian Cattle and Beef Holdings in a joint venture with the Lee family, who feature later in this round-up. Acton was well-known for his involvement in the Australian sport of campdrafting, where a horse and rider works cattle. But sadly it was this sport that led to his death after he fell from a horse during a competition and sustained severe injuries.
Stanbroke runs eight huge cattle stations in Queensland, making the firm one of the largest in the Australian farming sector. The company is controlled by the children of the late founder, grain king Peter Menegazzo, who was killed in a plane crash alongside his wife Angela in 2005. Menegazzo's sudden death has caused divides in the family, with his children still embroiled in courtroom dramas around their inheritance over a decade later.
In April 2020 the McMillan Pastoral Company agreed to buy Wollogorang Station and Wentworth Station from Chinese billionaire Ma Xingfa, who had acquired the holdings in 2015. The deal cost AU$53 million ($41m/£30m) and boosted the McMillan family’s portfolio by almost 706,000 hectares. In their second acquisition of the year, the McMillans then purchased Roxborough Downs and Mudgerebar Station, adding another 420,000 hectares. The family already owned Calvert Hills Station in the Cloncurry region of Queensland, which they acquired for AU$15 million ($11.6m/£8.5m) in 2013, bringing their total land to around 1.63 million hectares.
The leading landowning clan in North America, the Canadian Irving Family was reported to own some 1.3 million hectares in Canada by the Land Report in 2019, and about 513,000 hectares of sustainably-harvested forest across the border in Maine, USA according to the 2020 Land Report. In 2018, the Irvings planted their billionth tree in their continued efforts to be a sustainable business.
The Oxenford family owns and operates the Western Grazing Company, which has land holdings totalling 1.97 million hectares in Australia's Queensland and Northern Territory. The company’s largest station is Wave Hill, which stretches across 1.2 million hectares. The firm is one of the world's top producers of beef.
The Morgan and Wells families together own 2.1 million hectares of land along the border of South Australia and New South Wales. Their Mutooroo Pastoral Company was established in 1868 and manages five cattle stations including Quinyambie, which alone comprises 1.2 million hectares.
One of the world's leading packaging and paper production companies, the South Africa-based Mondi Group manages a not-too-shabby 2.4 million hectares of forest in South Africa and Russia.
Australian retail entrepreneur Brett Blundy has amassed an epic portfolio of land over the past few years, including the supersized Walhallow Cattle Station in the Northern Territory, which he acquired in 2015 for $77 million (£58m). His BBRC Beef company owns about 2.4 million hectares in total.
Swedish bank Handelsbanken is the majority owner of the Swedish Cellulose Company (SCA), Europe's largest landowner. The company says it has around 2.6 million hectares of forest in northern Sweden, equivalent to the size of North Macedonia.
The Hughes clan have run the family cattle business in Queensland since 1872. At 2.7 million hectares, the Hughes Pastoral Company is one of the biggest and most profitable beef-producing enterprises on the planet and specialises in the premium Wagyu cut.
The aristocratic Holmes à Court family are the proud owners of Australia's Heytesbury Cattle Company, which controls more than 2.7 million hectares of land in the country's vast Northern Territory.
Along with his family, organic agriculture enthusiast David Brook owns and operates farms in southern Queensland and South Australia. Their holdings total 3 million hectares, according to his OBE Organic Group, which cattle can freely roam across in line with the company's free range ethos. OBE Organic, as a conglomerate of farms owned by families across Australia, comprises more than 8 million hectares.
Australia's largest privately-owned beef producer, the Consolidated Pastoral Company has approximately 300,000 head of cattle at any one time and a massive 3.6 million hectares throughout the country, plus two feedlots in Indonesia. The company is majority-owned by UK investor Guy Hands' Terra Firma Capital Partners.
Yet another vast Australian farming enterprise, the Paraway Pastoral Company runs a number of major sheep, cattle and crop businesses covering more than 4.48 million hectares across the country. The firm is owned by Australian banking giant the Macquarie Group.
The Williams family's eponymous cattle company acquired the gigantic Anna Creek Station in South Australia in 2016, which at 1.57 million hectares is the largest working cattle station in the world. The family also owns another seven cattle stations in the same state, totalling 4.5 million hectares.
Another Australian farming business, the Jumbuck Pastoral Company was established in Adelaide by patriarch H P MacLachlan back in 1888. The firm, which is wholly owned by the founder's descendants, says it controls more than five million hectares across Australia in the form of 11 properties, and is the country's chief supplier of wool.
Dating way back to 1824, the Australian Agricultural Company is the nation's oldest firm. Today, British tycoon Joe Lewis (pictured) is the major shareholder. The company owns and operates a huge 6.4 million hectares in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
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The world's largest farm is the 9.1 million-hectare Mudanjiang City Mega Farm in China, which is jointly owned by China's Zhongding Dairy Farming and Russia's Severny Bur. The dairy farm, which is the size of Portugal, supplies the Russian market and is home to 100,000 cows with the capacity to pump out 800 million litres of milk a year.
Thanks to the Western Arctic (Inuvialuit) Claims Settlement Act, signed in 1984, the Inuvialuit living in Canada’s western Arctic hold title to 910,000 square kilometres of land, equivalent to 9.1 million hectares. The region’s logo is a gyrfalcon – the largest falcon in the world – and it was chosen just as the bird was about to be taken off the endangered species list, which served as a symbol for the Inuvialuit’s resilience – particularly when it comes to the issue of landownership.
Australia's wealthiest person is the country's number one private landowner too. In 2016 mining magnate Gina Rinehart, worth $23.8 billion (£17bn), teamed up with China's Shanghai CRED Pastoral to buy the lion's share of S. Kidman & Co., the largest individual private land holding on the planet, adding to her already bulging real estate portfolio. Controversially, Rinehart is also looking to open a new 2,800-hectare coal mine in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. However, the Australian billionaire's land holdings are set to decrease in the coming months, as she recently announced plans to sell off 1.876 million hectares’ worth of cattle stations in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in order to focus on innovation at her other holdings. This will leave Australia’s biggest landowner with around 7.8 million hectares.
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The Inuit in Nunavut, northern Canada, have title to over an enormous 35.3 million hectares in the region. The land was handed over by the Canadian Government in the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement in 1993 and went on to form the territory of Nunavut, which was created in 1999.
The Catholic Church is estimated to hold an incredible 71.6 million hectares of land in its bulging real estate portfolio, an area larger than France, according to The New Statesman. Needless to say, the Holy See is the second largest non-government landowner in the world, with vast swathes of land in countries from Germany to India.
By far the world's largest non-governmental landowner, Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the British Commonwealth and therefore legal owner of around 2.7 billion hectares of land, as estimated by The New Statesman. That's as much as a sixth of the planet’s land surface. The Crown Estate includes prime chunks of London, massive tracts of agricultural land in rural Britain and more than half of the UK's foreshore. The Crown also owns over 90% of land in Canada, where Queen Elizabeth II is head of state. However, the land cannot be sold by the Queen and is not considered her private property.
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