The ten largest private landowners in the United States are businessmen, billionaires and philanthropists. They add thousands of hectares of land to their lands every year. Some are interested in profit, others are concerned about the fate of the planet and the environment, and others are guided by personal motives. Among the landowners there are family dynasties, whose history goes back hundreds of years, and newly minted millionaires.

If you combine the estates of the ten largest private landowners in America, their area will be about 5.5 million hectares, or 55 thousand square kilometers, which is larger than the size of individual US states, such as Maryland, Connecticut or Hawaii.

10 The Pingree Family

Total land area: 336 thousand hectares

In 1841, the founder of the Pingree dynasty, merchant David Pingree began to acquire forest plots in Maine. Seven generations later, the family owns 336,000 hectares, mostly in Maine and New Hampshire. Unlike the typical landowners who sold their properties to factories to cut timber, the Pingrees partnered with corporations, retained voting rights, and enforced environmental standards for the work.

In 1964, the Pingree heirs established the Seven Islands Land Company, which now controls the use of the family's land. Pingrees have always been concerned about more than just profit - even at a time when the preservation of forests and environmental protection were few people's concern. Three-quarters of Pingri's land has the status of specially protected natural areas, where the natural habitat of wild animals is maintained.

9. Stan Kroenke

Total land area: 343 thousand hectares

Stan Kroenke is one of America's largest and richest real estate developers, and the owner of several sports teams, including London's Arsenal Football Club. Kroenke spends a significant part of his fortune on the acquisition of land. The total area of ​​the billionaire's possessions in Arizona, Montana and Wyoming is 4.5 times the size of New York. In 2012, Kroenke purchased a $132 million Montana Rocky Mountain ranch on 50,000 acres—about twice the size of Birmingham. On the plot there is a house of 930 square meters with a swimming pool. At the same time, the billionaire needs the ranch not so much for saving capital and recreation: first of all, elite breeds of cattle are bred here.

In 2016, Kroenke spent a tenth of his fortune buying one of America's 20 largest cattle ranches, Waggoner Ranch in Texas. The estimated purchase price was $655 million. On the territory of the ranch, Kroenke plans to build a luxurious residence, and the land will be used for growing wheat and raising livestock.

8. King family

Total land area: 369 thousand hectares

For more than 150 years, the King dynasty of landowners has owned a vast territory in southern Texas - the enterprising businessman Richard King began buying land here in 1853 and expanded the land until his death in 1885. Today "King's Ranch" is the largest in Texas, it includes the territory of six counties of the state. About a dozen books have been written about Richard King himself, and the city of Kingsville, located not far from the ranch, is even named in his honor. In 1961, King's Ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark.

The land owned by the King family is open to the public - tours are conducted on the territory for tourists and farmers are trained to farm with modern methods that are safe for nature. Eco-tourists come to King's Ranch - here you can fish, ride bicycles, and watch birds. The territory of the ranch is so vast and rich that it allows the owners not only to raise livestock and grow vegetables, nuts and citrus orchards, but even to extract oil and gas.

7. The Singleton Family

Total land area: 450 thousand hectares

Henry Singleton was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, one of the founders and head of a large electronics concern - Teledyne, Inc. In the mid-1980s, Singleton became interested in investing in land and began acquiring ranches in New Mexico and California. For 14 years, the businessman bought 28 ranches and became one of the largest landowners in America and the world. By 1999, Henry Singleton already owned 1.5 percent of the state of New Mexico. After his death, five of his children took over the management of the ranch.

One of the Singleton sites is located in the New Mexico Historic Region, south of the city of Santa Fe. Archaeological excavations are carried out on this territory, and the Singletons themselves cooperate with historians in order to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.

6. The Irving family

Total land area: 485 thousand hectares

The ancestor of the family, Kenneth Colin Irving, was a major Canadian industrialist, one of the fifteen richest people in the world. Today, his sons and grandchildren own about 300 companies engaged in business in the oil and gas industries, forestry, construction and telecommunications. In addition to 485,000 hectares in the US, the family owns over 800,000 hectares in Canada - the Irvings are considered one of the largest landowners in the world. They are also the main landowners in Maine.

5. Reid family

Total land area: 565 thousand hectares

The Reeds, who are among the top 150 richest families in America, are engaged in lumber processing. For five generations, the family has run the Green Diamond Resource Company. The Reeds own land and forests in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. In the ranking of the largest landowners in America, the family was only recently: almost half of their territories, 243 thousand hectares, the Reeds acquired in 2014. The Green Diamond Resource Company complies with all environmental standards and can serve as an example for other corporations in the forest industry. According to its charter, the company is obliged to preserve water and land resources, wild flora and fauna, cultural and historical monuments in the developed area. In 2015, at the 125th anniversary celebration of the Green Diamond Resource Company, the Reeds planted the 100 millionth tree.

In 2000, the company approved a plan according to which 51 species of wild animals and their natural habitats will be specially protected on the lands of the Reeds. Every year, the company uses only two percent of the available land in the production cycle, on which new trees are subsequently planted immediately so that the forest growth cycle is not interrupted.

4. Brad Kelly

Total land area: 670 thousand hectares

Tobacco tycoon Brad Kelly owns a lot of land in the states of New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. According to Kelly, he did not set himself the goal of becoming one of the largest landowners in the United States. The future billionaire grew up on a farm, and the land is something that is close and familiar to him since childhood. Kelly bought his first plot at the age of 17 right after graduation. Later, investing in land became one of the favorite ways for a businessman to preserve and increase capital. Kelly has a good eye for bargains - the last of the assets he acquired has doubled in price in five years. The billionaire does not manage the ranch, only invests in the purchase, and the previous owners continue to work on the land as tenants.

One of Brad Kelly's hobbies is breeding new breeds of livestock and raising rare species of animals. Kelly works with zoos and wildlife conservation funds. On one of his farms, dwarf buffalo, antelopes and wild bulls are bred, as well as tapirs, hippos and rhinos.

3. The Emerson family

Total land area: 770 thousand hectares

The Emerson family owns lands and forests in California. The Emerson lands are expanding rapidly, every year they acquire new territories - in 2015 alone, plots with a total area of ​​22,000 hectares were added to the family's piggy bank. The head of the family, Archie Emerson, is the largest private landowner in California. The Emersons have been in the timber industry for generations. They own the second largest lumber company in the US, Sierra Pacific Industries. The company also cares about the environment: every year, farmers cultivate only a little more than one percent of the Emersons' land, and new trees are planted to replace the felled trees.

Billionaires who could afford to live anywhere in the world wouldn't trade California for anything. Archie Emerson says that since childhood, more than anything else, he loves to be in the forest. There is no better recreation for him than hunting or fishing in his own lands. The Emerson Woods are privately owned but open to the public. Here it is allowed to engage in fishing, hiking, cycling, while it is forbidden to pick flowers, mushrooms and berries, spend the night in tents and kindle fires.

2. Ted Turner

Total land area: 809 thousand hectares

As a boy, CNN founder Ted Turner loved hunting, fishing, and roaming the woods. The billionaire claims that as a child he even got into the police by shooting a squirrel in the neighbor's lands. Then he swore to himself that someday he would earn a lot of money and buy as much land of his own as he wanted. Turner kept his word. Today he is one of America's largest landowners.

Turner's favorite place, where he spends a lot of time, is the Vermejo Park Ranch. The billionaire hosts guests - politicians, royalty and show business stars - in a mansion built in the middle of a ranch over a century ago. By the way, “mere mortals” can also live here: a room in the Turner mansion can be rented at a price of $550-650 per night. Recently, Ted Turner decided to take on a new business - ecotourism. Vermejo Park and three other ranches of the entrepreneur have opened to the public who want to go fishing, cycling, hiking, photo safari and so on. The billionaire plans to turn his private property into a national park, but more intimate and cozy than, for example, Yellowstone. According to Turner, hundreds of cameras will not be aimed at bison in his park - here you can stay alone with nature.

1. John Malone

Total land area: 890 thousand hectares

The first place in the ranking of the largest US landowners is occupied by John Malone. The founder of Liberty Media Corporation, one of the hundred richest people in the world owns ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado, as well as forests in Maine. The territory owned by Malone is 150 times the size of Manhattan and three times the size of the state of Rhode Island with a population of one million people. The billionaire's land in Maine makes up more than five percent of the state's area.

Malone recently took first place in the ranking of America's largest landowners. About half of his land - 485 hectares of forests in Maine and land in New Hampshire - he acquired in 2011. Malone is an old friend of the previous character, Ted Turner. According to the businessman, it was Turner who "infected" him with land fever. And also, according to the millionaire, his passion for collecting lands was influenced by Jewish roots and the genetic memory of the people living in him, who had not had their own territory for centuries. Millarder says that in addition to financial and environmental concerns, he is inspired to constantly acquire more and more new sites by a special feeling of awe and admiration that he feels when looking at the vast expanses of his land.

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According to the New Statesman study, the family of an Australian who moved to Hollywood is today the eighth largest private landowner in the world and the first, except for monarchs. Its possessions extend throughout the Green Continent, and the total area of ​​the territory belonging to the Kidmans exceeds the area of ​​90 countries of the world and is 24 million acres, or approximately 9.71 million hectares. Only one of the plots belonging to the clan (on which the world's largest cattle farm, Anna Creek is located), exceeds the territory of such a rather big European country as Belgium.

But the most amazing thing in the state of the family- the fact that the founder of the dynasty, Sir Sidney Kidman, made it practically from scratch. The son of poor emigrant farmers from Adelaide, born in 1857, ran away from home at the age of 13 to become a cattle driver: then all his property was a one-eyed mare and five shillings. But soon the teenager realized that he was bored of being a simple hired worker and went into business. His first venture was a butcher shop in New South Wales. Things were going well, and soon Sidney was already engaged in the horse trade. And at the end of the 19th century, at the age of 29, he had already acquired his first large piece of land in Owen Springs. With him, the land empire of the Kidmans began.

As Sidney himself said, he always had a dream: to make his possessions stretch across the entire Australian continent - through the central arid territories, from one cattle farm to another, along riverbeds: this would allow cattle to be driven across the entire continent and delivered as close as possible to the buyer. Obsessed with this idea, the businessman began to buy farms and adjacent land in Central Australia one after another, and eventually acquired more than 100 such plots.

As it turned out, it was a wise decision.. The vast expanses gave the livestock business flexibility: if a drought hit on one side of the continent, Kidman simply drove the herds to another place, while his small competitors, who did not have sufficient land resources, suffered losses and went bankrupt one after another. By 1935, Sidney Kidman had become one of the richest people in Australia and its largest landowner (he sarcastically said about England that he was not averse to turning one of the British Isles into a personal "cattle paddock").

But in spite of all my condition, he retained the habits of a poor farmer until the end of his days. He could have easily afforded to buy his own train, but instead he always traveled around the country in second class - and that, he said, only because "there is no third class in Australia."

At the time of Kidman's death in 1935 he owned about 3% of Australia. Today, Sidney's land-owning empire is about three times smaller than it was eighty years ago. But this does not in the least prevent the fourth generation of Kidmans from successfully dealing with weather adversity and repelling the attacks of developers and speculators on their vast holdings.

Family business last year, part of which belongs to one of the most beautiful and stylish women in Hollywood, has collectively earned more than $ 2.55 million in profit. This may not be much for a modern high-tech company, but more than enough for an investor who invests in the most valuable resource on the planet - land.

To be completely precise, formally neither the Kidmans nor anyone else in Australia owns the land. This entire country belongs to Queen Elizabeth II, as does Canada, the British Isles and a host of other territories. But really, of course,

The largest private landowners in the world (data from The New Statesman)

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia owns 547 million acres or 221 million hectares. Officially, he owns the land in the interests of his people, and he received it as a gift from the Lord.

To the current Pope Benedict XVI, which is the formal administrator of the territory of the Roman Catholic Church, owns 177 million acres, or just over 71.5 million hectares.

Australian landowners occupied 8 of 24 places in the ranking of the largest private landowners by The New Statesman. In the vast majority of cases, these are the same families of former former livestock breeders as the Kidmans.

At the same time, America's largest private landowner, media magnate Ted Turner, owns a modest 2 million acres of land or 809 thousand hectares (24th in the world) - a mere trifle compared to Australian competitors.

1. JSC firm "Agrocomplex" them. N. I. Tkacheva

The company was founded in 1993 by the father of the ex-governor of the Krasnodar Territory and former Minister of Agriculture of Russia Alexander Tkachev. Now it includes 60 enterprises that are engaged in crop production, feed production, meat and dairy farming, horticulture, and processing of agricultural products. Products are sold by partner companies in almost all regions of the European part of Russia and Western Siberia, as well as by our own chain of stores. The holding's revenue in 2018 exceeded 50 billion rubles.

2. Agroholding Steppe (including RZ Agro)

AFK Sistema entered agriculture in 2011, having bought two companies in the Rostov region with a land bank of about 46,000 hectares at auctions of the Federal Property Management Agency. In 2012, this asset was listed in RZ Agro, a joint venture with members of the Louis-Dreyfus family. Two years later, Sistema acquired the Steppe agricultural holding. In 2015, Vladimir Yevtushenkov announced that he plans to create a company with a land bank of 1 million hectares, but has not yet reached this goal. The agricultural holding develops crop production, dairy farming and intensive horticulture.

3. Miratorg

The company was founded by the Linnik brothers in 1995. Now Miratorg is the largest meat producer in Russia. Along the way, carrying out a full cycle of production of meat products, the company is engaged in crop production and feed production. She also develops a network of Burger & Fries restaurants and Miratorg branded stores. The company is the only Certified Angus Beef producer outside of North America. In Russia, Miratorg is the owner of the largest land bank in terms of area.

4. Prodimex (including Agrokultura)

Established in 1992, the company was initially engaged in the import of sugar, in 1996 it also had its own production. Now Prodimex has 16 factories producing 1.5 million tons of sugar per year. In 2017, the agricultural enterprises of the holding grew 4.7 million tons of sugar beets. Grain, legumes and oilseeds are also grown. The company, together with Stefan Duerr's EkoNiva, is developing a project for the construction of dairy mega-farms for several thousand heads of cattle each.

5. Concern "Pokrovsky"

Concern "Pokrovsky" produces electrical equipment, builds premium residential real estate and develops commercial real estate. The group has its own retail network of 200 stores. But agribusiness is a priority. In crop production, the main crops are sugar beets and cereals. Pokrovsky enterprises produce 1.6 million tons of agricultural products per year, more than 300,000 tons are exported. The concern owns two elevators, a feed mill and a flour mill.

6. Group of companies "Dominant"

"Dominant" was established in 1995 on the basis of three sugar factories in the Krasnodar Territory. The main activity of the agricultural holding is still sugar production, based on its own resource base - sugar beet sown areas. The group also includes dairy farms, meat processing and dairy plants. Dairy products from the company's three plants in the Leningradskaya, Starominskaya and Bryukhovetskaya villages are sold under the Kuban Molochnik brand by the South Sugar trust (part of Dominant).

7. Rusagro Group

The group of companies was formed in 2003. Rusagro enterprises are engaged in crop production, production of milk, meat and fat and oil products. In 2018, revenue grew by 5% to 83 billion rubles, EBITDA exceeded 16 billion rubles. In 2011, the parent company of the group, the Cypriot Ros Agro plc, held an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. Then the company raised $330 million, in April 2016 during the group's SPO - another $250 million. Ros Agro plc shares (20.8%) are traded on the Moscow and London stock exchanges.

8. Group of agricultural enterprises "Resource"

The main activity is poultry farming. Today, Resurs, founded in 2003, is one of the largest broiler meat producers in Russia. The group's enterprises also grow crops, produce animal feed and sunflower oil. In 2018, the first and only poultry plant in Russia, specializing in the production of exclusively halal poultry, began to operate. Resurs products are sold by 20 distributors and 600 partner wholesalers.

9. Avangard-Agro

The company was founded in 2004 by Kirill Minovalov, the owner of Avangard Bank. It specializes in the cultivation of barley, wheat, sunflower, sugar beet, buckwheat and corn, there is also a meat and dairy direction. It also produces brewing malt and sugar. The agricultural holding's revenue in 2018 amounted to 17.3 billion rubles, net profit - 4.7 billion rubles. In April 2019, it became known that Alexei Bogachev, a minority shareholder of the Magnit retailer, became the co-owner of Avangard-Agro. His company Meridian acquired 11.3% of the agricultural holding for 3.3 billion rubles.

10. "South of Russia"

The company, founded in 1992 by Sergey Kislov, was initially engaged in the production and export of flour. In 1999, the company launched an oil extraction plant with a capacity of 1000 tons per day. This became the main business of the "South of Russia". Now the company is the largest producer of bottled vegetable oil and covers the demand for this product by 30% in Russia and 20% in Kazakhstan. In addition to sunflower oil, the group's enterprises produce flour, cereals, canned fruits and vegetables, mayonnaises and sauces.

11. Volgo-Don Agroinvest

Former Lukoil top manager Sergey Kukura and his son Alexander have been working in the agricultural industry for more than 15 years. Initially, the main assets of the company were concentrated in the Volgograd region. In 2015, the family-owned Lipetsk agro-industrial company acquired 35,000 hectares for 1.75 billion rubles from VTB Bank. In 2017, the Kukurs increased their land bank by purchasing 246,000 hectares from the Swedish Black Earth Farming in the Kursk and Tambov regions. The main activity of the company is the cultivation, storage and sale of grain.

12. "Ekoniva-APK"

The German Stefan Duerr began working in Russia in the 1990s: first he advised the State Duma on legislative issues in the agricultural sector, in 1994 he created the Ekoniva-APK agricultural holding, in 1996 he began importing used Western-made harvesters. In 2011, Ekoniva split into two structures: EkonivaTekhnika-Holding, which specializes in the supply of agricultural machinery, and the agricultural Ekoniva-APK Holding. In 2014, Dürr received a Russian passport for special services to Russia. Ekoniva-APK is the country's largest producer of raw milk.

13. GK "Light"

The history of the Svetly group of companies began in the Soviet Union with the eponymous state farm in the north of the Rostov region, which cultivates 6,500 hectares. In 1993, a partnership was created on its basis, which in 1998 was transformed into a cooperative, and in 2010 into an LLC. Nikolai Goncharov came to work at Svetly in 2006 as the head of a department, and a year later he became the main shareholder of the former state farm. The businessman's parents - Alexander and Tatyana - hold the positions of general and financial directors, respectively.

14. Agroholding Kuban

The agricultural holding was established in 2002 on the basis of three Krasnodar collective farms. The land bank of the company then did not exceed 30,000 hectares. Now the agricultural holding is engaged in crop production, animal husbandry and sugar production, until recently - seed production. But in April 2018, Deripaska’s agricultural holding was the only one of the Krasnodar enterprises that fell under US sanctions, because of this, the owner changed in the NPO Seed Breeding of Kuban, which was part of the association. The new owner was a company associated with Deripaska's cousin Pavel Ezubov.

15. AFG National (including agricultural firms Vesna and Nizhegorodskaya)

The agricultural holding was established in 2013 as a result of the merger of the Angstrem group of companies and the AF-Group holding. Today it is Russia's largest producer of rice and packaged cereals. In 2018, the company received a record harvest of rice - 222,000 tons in bunker weight. The agricultural holding exports about 80,000 tons of products per year. At the end of 2017, the investment group Volga Group of billionaire Gennady Timchenko became a partner of AFG, which bought a 35% stake in the capital of Southern Lands LLC, which is part of National.

16. GK "ASB"

The history of the agricultural holding began in 1999 with the Kirsanovsky sugar plant in the Tambov region, which became part of the ASB group of companies created by Yuri Khokhlov. Today, the holding includes seven enterprises, including a creamery, sugar refineries and the South-Eastern Agrogroup. GC ASB is 50% owned by Yuri Khokhlov and 50% by his wife Tatyana. In the summer of 2016, ASB Group of Companies signed an investment agreement with the government of the Ulyanovsk region on the creation of an agrocluster in the region, investments in it are planned in the amount of 24 billion rubles.

17. Agrogard

In 2003, when the company was created by merging several Krasnodar agricultural enterprises, its land bank exceeded 50,000 hectares. Initially, the lands of Agrogard were collected to test fertilizers, which are produced by the main asset of billionaire Andrey Guryev, the Phosagro company, but over time, the agricultural company has grown into an independent business. Now Agrogard operates in five regions of Russia, the main areas are crop production and milk production (the number of cattle on its farms exceeds 12,000).

18. Cherkizovo

In 1998, Igor Babaev came to work at the Cherkizovsky Meat Processing Plant (ChMPZ). A year later, the enterprising engineer became the general director, and during the privatization, the Babaev family bought a controlling stake in the plant. Now Cherkizovo is one of the largest producers of meat in Russia and its products, last year the company harvested 480,000 tons of grain from its fields, 24% less than a year earlier. Last year, the company earned 102.6 billion rubles in revenue, with crop production accounting for 7%.

19. Agroterra

Out of 300,000 hectares of its land, Agroterra cultivates 200,000 hectares and, with this indicator, ranks 18th in the list of leaders in Russian arable land. The company was established in 2008 by the investment company NHC Capital Inc., founded by George Rohr, a US citizen with Ukrainian roots. Rohr began investing in assets in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, in 2012 the Ukrainian Forbes wrote that his companies had collected more than 800,000 hectares of land in Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and Kazakhstan. The Russian "Agroterra" includes 30 farms.

20. "Bio-Tone"

Bio-Tone was founded in 2004 by Alexei Martynov, who transferred his stake to his wife Natalya in 2011 after he was appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Samara Region. In 2013, entrepreneur Vladimir Kirillov became the owner of 75% of the company. In 2018, the agricultural holding collected 470,000 tons of grain and leguminous crops. Total capital investments for the year amounted to 1.5 billion rubles, part of which went to the purchase of the Samara company Agro Service, which owns 5,300 hectares of land. Since 2007, Bio-Tone has returned over 105,000 hectares of fallow land to circulation.

The ten largest private landowners in the United States are businessmen, billionaires and philanthropists. They add thousands of hectares of land to their lands every year. Some are interested in profit, others are concerned about the fate of the planet and the environment, and others are guided by personal motives.

Among the landowners there are family dynasties, whose history goes back hundreds of years, and newly minted millionaires. If you combine the estates of the ten largest private landowners in America, their area will be about 5.5 million hectares, or 55 thousand square kilometers, which is larger than the size of individual US states, such as Maryland, Connecticut or Hawaii. Yulia Gushchina, Tranio specialist, found out who owns America for Dom.

10 The Pingree Family

Total land area: 336 thousand hectares

In 1841, the founder of the Pingree dynasty, merchant David Pingree began to acquire forest plots in Maine. Seven generations later, the family owns 336,000 hectares, mostly in Maine and New Hampshire. Unlike the typical landowners who sold their properties to factories to cut timber, the Pingrees partnered with corporations, retained voting rights, and enforced environmental standards for the work.

In 1964, the Pingree heirs established the Seven Islands Land Company, which now controls the use of the family's land. Pingrees have always been concerned about more than just profit - even at a time when the preservation of forests and environmental protection were few people's concern. Three-quarters of Pingri's land has the status of specially protected natural areas, where the natural habitat of wild animals is maintained.

9. Stan Kroenke

Total land area: 343 thousand hectares

Stan Kroenke is one of America's largest and richest real estate developers, and the owner of several sports teams, including London's Arsenal Football Club.

Kroenke spends a significant part of his fortune on the acquisition of land. The total area of ​​the billionaire's possessions in Arizona, Montana and Wyoming is 4.5 times the size of New York. In 2012, Kroenke purchased a $132 million Montana Rocky Mountain ranch on 50,000 acres—about twice the size of Birmingham. On the plot there is a house of 930 square meters with a swimming pool. At the same time, the billionaire needs the ranch not so much for saving capital and recreation: first of all, elite breeds of cattle are bred here.

In 2016, Kroenke spent a tenth of his fortune buying one of America's 20 largest cattle ranches, Waggoner Ranch in Texas. The estimated purchase price was $655 million. On the territory of the ranch, Kroenke plans to build a luxurious residence, and the land will be used for growing wheat and raising livestock.

8. King family

Total land area: 369 thousand hectares

For more than 150 years, the King dynasty of landowners has owned a vast territory in southern Texas - the enterprising businessman Richard King began buying land here in 1853 and expanded the land until his death in 1885. Today "King's Ranch" is the largest in Texas, it includes the territory of six counties of the state. About a dozen books have been written about Richard King himself, and the city of Kingsville, located not far from the ranch, is even named in his honor. In 1961, King's Ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark.

The land owned by the King family is open to the public - tours are conducted on the territory for tourists and farmers are trained to farm with modern methods that are safe for nature. Eco-tourists come to King's Ranch - here you can fish, ride bicycles, and watch birds.

The territory of the ranch is so vast and rich that it allows the owners not only to raise livestock and grow vegetables, nuts and citrus orchards, but even to extract oil and gas.

Total land area: 450 thousand hectares

Henry Singleton was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, one of the founders and head of a large electronics concern - Teledyne, Inc. In the mid-1980s, Singleton became interested in investing in land and began acquiring ranches in New Mexico and California. For 14 years, the businessman bought 28 ranches and became one of the largest landowners in America and the world. By 1999, Henry Singleton already owned 1.5 percent of the state of New Mexico. After his death, five of his children took over the management of the ranch.

One of the Singleton sites is located in the New Mexico Historic Region, south of the city of Santa Fe. Archaeological excavations are carried out on this territory, and the Singletons themselves cooperate with historians in order to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.

6. The Irving family

Total land area: 485 thousand hectares

The ancestor of the family, Kenneth Colin Irving, was a major Canadian industrialist, one of the fifteen richest people in the world. Today, his sons and grandchildren own about 300 companies engaged in business in the oil and gas industries, forestry, construction and telecommunications.

In addition to 485,000 hectares in the US, the family owns over 800,000 hectares in Canada - the Irvings are considered one of the largest landowners in the world. They are also the main landowners in Maine.

5. Reid family

Total land area: 565 thousand hectares

The Reeds, who are among the top 150 richest families in America, are engaged in lumber processing. For five generations, the family has run the Green Diamond Resource Company. The Reeds own land and forests in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. In the ranking of the largest landowners in America, the family was only recently: almost half of their territories, 243 thousand hectares, the Reeds acquired in 2014.

The Green Diamond Resource Company complies with all environmental standards and can serve as an example for other corporations in the forest industry. According to its charter, the company is obliged to preserve water and land resources, wild flora and fauna, cultural and historical monuments in the developed area. In 2015, at the 125th anniversary celebration of the Green Diamond Resource Company, the Reeds planted the 100 millionth tree.

In 2000, the company approved a plan according to which 51 species of wild animals and their natural habitats will be specially protected on the lands of the Reeds. Every year, the company uses only two percent of the available land in the production cycle, on which new trees are subsequently planted immediately so that the forest growth cycle is not interrupted.

4. Brad Kelly

Total land area: 670 thousand hectares

Tobacco tycoon Brad Kelly owns a lot of land in the states of New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. According to Kelly, he did not set himself the goal of becoming one of the largest landowners in the United States. The future billionaire grew up on a farm, and the land is something that is close and familiar to him since childhood.

Kelly bought his first plot at the age of 17 right after graduation. Later, investing in land became one of the favorite ways for a businessman to preserve and increase capital. Kelly has a good eye for bargains - the last of the assets he acquired has doubled in price in five years. The billionaire does not manage the ranch, only invests in the purchase, and the previous owners continue to work on the land as tenants.

One of Brad Kelly's hobbies is breeding new breeds of livestock and raising rare species of animals. Kelly works with zoos and wildlife conservation funds. On one of his farms, dwarf buffalo, antelopes and wild bulls are bred, as well as tapirs, hippos and rhinos.

3. The Emerson family

Total land area: 770 thousand hectares

The Emerson family owns lands and forests in California. The Emerson lands are expanding rapidly, every year they acquire new territories - in 2015 alone, plots with a total area of ​​22,000 hectares were added to the family's piggy bank. The head of the family, Archie Emerson, is the largest private landowner in California.

The Emersons have been in the timber industry for generations. They own the second largest lumber company in the US, Sierra Pacific Industries. The company also cares about the environment: every year, farmers cultivate only a little more than one percent of the Emersons' land, and new trees are planted to replace the felled trees.

Billionaires who could afford to live anywhere in the world wouldn't trade California for anything. Archie Emerson says that since childhood, more than anything else, he loves to be in the forest. There is no better recreation for him than hunting or fishing in his own lands.

The Emerson Woods are privately owned but open to the public. Here it is allowed to engage in fishing, hiking, cycling, while it is forbidden to pick flowers, mushrooms and berries, spend the night in tents and kindle fires.

2. Ted Turner

Total land area: 809 thousand hectares

As a boy, CNN founder Ted Turner loved hunting, fishing, and roaming the woods. The billionaire claims that as a child he even got into the police by shooting a squirrel in the neighbor's lands. Then he swore to himself that someday he would earn a lot of money and buy as much land of his own as he wanted. Turner kept his word. Today he is one of America's largest landowners.

Turner's favorite place, where he spends a lot of time, is the Vermejo Park Ranch. The billionaire hosts guests - politicians, royalty and show business stars - in a mansion built in the middle of a ranch over a century ago. By the way, “mere mortals” can also live here: a room in the Turner mansion can be rented at a price of $550-650 per night.

Recently, Ted Turner decided to take on a new business - ecotourism. Vermejo Park and three other ranches of the entrepreneur have opened to the public who want to go fishing, cycling, hiking, photo safari and so on.

The billionaire plans to turn his private property into a national park, but more intimate and cozy than, for example, Yellowstone. According to Turner, hundreds of cameras will not be aimed at bison in his park - here you can stay alone with nature.

1. John Malone

Total land area: 890 thousand hectares

The first place in the ranking of the largest US landowners is occupied by John Malone. The founder of Liberty Media Corporation, one of the hundred richest people in the world owns ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado, as well as forests in Maine.

The territory owned by Malone is 150 times the size of Manhattan and three times the size of the state of Rhode Island with a population of one million people. The billionaire's land in Maine makes up more than five percent of the state's area.

Malone recently took first place in the ranking of America's largest landowners. About half of his land - 485 hectares of forests in Maine and land in New Hampshire - he acquired in 2011. Malone is an old friend of the previous character, Ted Turner. According to the businessman, it was Turner who "infected" him with land fever. And also, according to the millionaire, his passion for collecting lands was influenced by Jewish roots and the genetic memory of the people living in him, who had not had their own territory for centuries. Millarder says that in addition to financial and environmental concerns, he is inspired to constantly acquire more and more new sites by a special feeling of awe and admiration that he feels when looking at the vast expanses of his land.

And the Kremlin authorities wish you a good mood!!!

The 5 largest agricultural holdings have concentrated in their hands so much land that a country the size of Moldova can fit on it. Who created these companies? And who paid for their records?

Less than 100 thousand hectares is not considered

The largest landowner in Russia, according to the rating for 2019, which was published in May, was the Miratorg company for the first time. In total, the consulting company BEFL counted 44 holdings in the country that manage land in excess of 100 thousand hectares, and another 12 agricultural enterprises with 100 thousand hectares.

The first five are especially impressive, in relation to which the word “most” sounds repeatedly (see infographic).

Miratorg is the largest producer of beef and pork in the Russian Federation, Prodimex - sugar, EkoNiva - milk. Other prizes belong to Rusagro and Agrocomplex. And the co-owners of three holdings - Vadim Moshkovich, Alexander and Viktor Linnik, Igor Khudokormov - are included in the Forbes rating as the richest agricultural businessmen.

Who has the most pigs in Russia?

Latifundia, uniting many former collective and state farms, began to take shape in Russia about 15 years ago, when agriculture began to turn into a profitable business. Huge fields and pastures lay in ruins. Money was needed to bring them back to life. The farmers themselves had no money. But they were among the people who extract oil and ore, manage banks, and import food. It is not surprising that in the end it was they who collected the largest allotments, buying up shares of former collective farmers and entire agricultural firms.

The twin brothers Linnik got rich on the supply of meat from Holland and Brazil. Igor Khudokormov and Vadim Moshkovich climbed on Ukrainian sugar. Other major Russian landowners include the Volgo-Don Agroinvest holding, created by the former first vice president of Lukoil, Sergey Kukura, and the Step company, owned by AFK Sistema, owned by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov.

If you study the family ties of the founders of other agricultural giants, you will find high-level officials. The most famous example is Agrocomplex im. N. I. Tkachev”, which for the first time entered the top 10 of the BEFL rating during the years when its founder Alexander Tkachev worked as the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. The land bank of this Kuban company (that is, all land acquired in ownership or leased) from 2016 to 2018 increased by 1.4 times. Acquisitions were made on loans received from the largest state-owned banks.

At the same time, other agro-oligarchs are also rapidly expanding their holdings. According to the BEFL, the volume of agricultural land in the hands of legal entities increased by 38% from 2012 to 2018. During these years, the government actively engaged in reducing imports and increasing food exports. Purchases of most products in European countries that have announced anti-Russian sanctions were banned, and state support for domestic producers was strengthened. And the first in line for subsidies and preferential loans were large companies. By 2012-2014 they have already managed to get the best land and build their own processing plants. Who else to help, if not the strongest and most experienced, if you need a quick result?

For Miratorg, the Bryansk Regional Duma even specifically changed the local law, which allowed one company to own no more than 35% of the land in one administrative district. The rate was raised to 50%. Now Linnikov has the largest herd of Aberdeen black bulls in the world, 629 thousand heads, and the largest number of pigs in Russia.

Russified foreigners

The story of the German Stefan Duerr is generally a plot for a movie. 30 years ago, he came to student practice at a collective farm near Moscow, where he worked as a pig inseminator. He married a Russian girl. And in the end, having sold his farm in Germany, he bought the first 5,000 hectares near Voronezh, Kursk and Orenburg through the Russian "daughter" of his foreign company. Russian legislation prohibits foreigners from owning land. But various legal schemes allow this restriction to be circumvented. And among the 56 largest agricultural holdings in the BEFL rating, at least 4 have foreign origins: Kazakhstan, France, Turkey, and the USA.

But the company, founded by an enterprising German, is now purely Russian. Former Voronezh Governor and current Deputy Prime Minister for Agriculture Alexei Gordeev personally asked Vladimir Putin to grant Stefan Duerr citizenship of the Russian Federation. And after the presidential decree was issued in December 2013, EkoNiva's business moved forward by leaps and bounds.

Costs of Gigantism

The results of the bet on large domestic business are on the shelves. Russia has completely stopped importing raw beet sugar, and its dependence on overseas meat has sharply decreased. But experts also see the other side of success: the cost of production in agricultural holdings is too high. If the borders are reopened before imports, our pork, beef, milk and even sugar will be uncompetitive.

“The question arises: at what price did large companies feed the country? - asks Natalia Shagaida, director of the RANEPA Center for Agro-Food Policy. - They received huge subsidies, and the prices that buyers pay for their products are higher than if the same products were imported. It turns out that the growth of diversified holdings is paid for by all consumers and taxpayers of the country. It's not fair. Creating special conditions for companies with high production costs can only be temporary. And during this time they must learn to produce competitive products.

Such a high concentration of land among several dozen owners, as happened in Russia, is being avoided in other countries. It is believed that this hinders the development of small agribusiness - the basis of sustainable agriculture. In the United States and the European Union, state subsidies are deliberately limited to large farms. And Russian experience shows that industries in which the share of farm production is high are the most competitive. In 2016, for example, farmers provided 29% of grain harvest and 32% of sunflower harvest against 23% and 31.4% for holdings. And Russia is the leader in the export of these products.

At the same time, sooner or later, latifundist companies will stop developing, - continues Natalia Shagaida. - They will not be able to reach the level of the leaders of the world agro-industrial complex, which are engaged in the processing of agricultural raw materials, and the production is given to independent agricultural firms and farmers. It is too difficult to effectively manage a huge economy, including factories and hundreds of thousands of hectares of land.