Ten people who actually own the land of the united states. Agrosila Group is catching up with Ak Bars Holding on arable land Large land owner

The ten largest private landowners in the United States are businessmen, billionaires and philanthropists. They add thousands of hectares of land to their holdings every year. Some are interested in profit, others are concerned about the fate of the planet and the environment, while 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. Julia Gushchina, a Tranio specialist, found out who owns America for Dom.

10. The Pingri family

Total land area: 336 thousand hectares

In 1841, the founder of the Pingree Dynasty, merchant David Pingree, began acquiring forest plots in Maine. Seven generations later, the family owns 336,000 hectares, mostly in Maine and New Hampshire. Unlike typical landowners who sold their properties to factories for logging, the Pingri family worked with corporations, retaining the right to vote, and enforcing environmental work standards.

In 1964, the Pingree heirs established the Seven Islands Land Company, which now controls the use of the family's land. The Pingri have always cared not only about profit - and even in those days when the conservation of forests and the protection of environment few people cared. Three-quarters of Pingri's land has the status of a specially protected natural area, which maintains the natural habitat of wild animals.

9. Stan Kronke

Total land area: 343 thousand hectares

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

Krohnke spends a large part of his fortune on land acquisition. The billionaire's total land area in Arizona, Montana and Wyoming is 4.5 times the size of New York City. In 2012, Krohnke acquired a $ 132 million, 50,000-hectare ranch off the Rocky Mountains in Montana - roughly two Birmingham. On the plot there is a house with an area of 930 square meters with a swimming pool. At the same time, the billionaire needs a ranch not so much to preserve capital and rest: first of all, elite breeds of cattle are bred here.

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

8. The King family

Total land area: 369 thousand hectares

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

The King family land is open to the public with guided tours for tourists and training for farmers to farm. modern methods safe for nature. Eco-tourists come to King Ranch - here you can fish, ride bicycles, watch birds.

The ranch area is so vast and rich that it allows 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 the head of a large electronics company - 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 ranch management.

One of the Singletons' sites is located in the Historic Area in New Mexico, south of the city of Santa Fe. Archaeological excavations are taking place in this area, and the Singletons themselves work with historians to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.

6. The Irving family

Total land area: 485 thousand hectares

In addition to 485 thousand hectares in the United States, the family owns an area of more than 800 thousand hectares in Canada - the Irving are considered one of the largest landowners in the world. They are also the main landowners in Maine.

5. The Reed family

Total land area: 565 thousand hectares

Green Diamond Resourse 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, Reedami planted a 100 millionth tree in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Green Diamond Resourse Company.

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 Reed lands. Annually in production cycle the company uses only two percent of the available land, on which new trees are planted immediately, so that the forest growth cycle is not interrupted.

4. Brad Kelly

Total land area: 670 thousand hectares

Kelly bought his first plot at the age of 17 right after leaving school. Later, investments in land became for a businessman one of the favorite ways to preserve and increase capital. Kelly has a good instinct for profitable deals - the last of the assets he acquired has doubled in price in five years. The billionaire does not run 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 conservation funds wildlife... One of his farms breeds dwarf buffaloes, antelopes and wild bulls, as well as tapirs, hippos and rhinos.

3. The Emerson family

Total land area: 770 thousand hectares

The Emersons have been working in the timber industry for several generations. They own the second largest sawnwood company in the United States, Sierra Pacific Industries. The company also cares about the environment: every year, farmers cultivate only slightly more than one percent of the Emerson land, and new trees are planted to replace the felled trees.

The Emerson Forests are privately owned but open to the public. It is allowed to go fishing, hiking, cycling, but it is forbidden to pick flowers, mushrooms and berries, spend the night in tents and light fires.

2. Ted Turner

Total land area: 809 thousand hectares

As a boy, the founder of CNN, Ted Turner, loved most of all to hunt, fish and wander through the woods. The billionaire claims that as a child he even got into the police, having shot a squirrel in the grounds of a neighbor. Then he vowed to himself that someday he would make a lot of money and buy as much of his own land. Turner kept his word. Today he is one of the largest landowners in America.

Recently, Ted Turner decided to take on new business- ecotourism. Vermejo Park and three other ranches of the entrepreneur have opened to the public who wants to fish, do cycling, hiking, photo safaris and so on.

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

1. John Malone

Total land area: 890 thousand hectares

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

Malone recently took first place in the ranking of America's largest landowners. He acquired about half of his land - 485 hectares of forests in Maine and land in New Hampshire - in 2011. Malone is an old friend of the previous hero, Ted Turner. According to the businessman, it was Turner who "infected" him with the land fever. And also, according to the millionaire, his passion for collecting land was influenced by Jewish roots and the genetic memory of the people living in him, which for centuries did not have their territory. Millarder says that in addition to financial reasons and concern for the environment, his constant acquisition of more and more new sites is inspired by a special sense of awe and admiration that he experiences when looking at the vast expanses of his land.

The five largest landowners in Russia own as much land as is equivalent to the size of all of Moldova. Or Belgium. Or Switzerland.

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

The 5 largest agricultural holdings have concentrated in their hands so much land that it can accommodate a country the size of Moldova. 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, for the first time was Miratorg. Total consulting company BEFL counted 44 holdings in the country that manage lands exceeding 100 thousand hectares, and 12 more agricultural enterprises, which have 100 thousand hectares.

The first five are especially impressive, in relation to which the word "most" is repeated many times (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 Linniki, 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 15 years ago, when agriculture began to turn into profitable business... Huge fields and pastures lay in desolation. It took money to bring them back to life. The farmers themselves had no money. But they were in the people who extract oil and ore, manage banks, 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 Linniki twin brothers got rich on the supply of meat from Holland and Brazil. Igor Khudokormov and Vadim Moshkovich rose on Ukrainian sugar. Among the other largest latifundists in Russia is the Volgo-Don Agroinvest holding, created former first the vice-president of Lukoil, Sergey Kukura, and the Steppe company, owned by AFK Sistema, billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov.

If you study the family ties of the founders of other agro-giants, you will find high-level officials. The most famous example is “Agrocomplex im. NI Tkachev ", which first entered the top 10 of the BEFL ranking in the years when its founder Alexander Tkachev worked as a minister Agriculture RF. The land bank of this Kuban company (that is, all land acquired for ownership or lease) from 2016 to 2018 increased by 1.4 times. The acquisitions were carried out on loans received from the largest state-owned banks.

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

For Miratorg, the Bryansk Regional Duma even specially 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 black Aberdeen bulls in the world, 629 thousand heads, and pigs are the largest in Russia.

Russified foreigners

The story of the German Stefan Duerr is generally a plot for cinema. 30 years ago, he came to a student practice in 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 5000 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 limitation 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 United States.

But the company, founded by an enterprising German, is already purely Russian today. Former Voronezh Governor and current Deputy Prime Minister for Agriculture Alexei Gordeev personally asked Vladimir Putin to grant Stefan Duerr Russian citizenship. And after the presidential decree was issued in December 2013, the business of EkoNiva went ahead 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 downside of success: the cost of production in agricultural holdings is too high. If the borders are reopened to import, our pork, beef, milk and even sugar will be uncompetitive.

“The question arises: at what price did large companies feed the country? - asks Natalya Shagaida, director of the RANEPA Center for Agri-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 in the country. This is not fair. Create special conditions for companies with high production costs it is possible only temporarily. And during this time they must learn to produce competitive products.

Such high concentration land owned by several dozen owners, as happened in Russia, in other countries are trying to prevent. This is believed to impede the development of small agribusiness - the foundation of sustainable agriculture. In the United States and the European Union, government subsidies are deliberately limited to large farms. AND Russian experience shows: the 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 versus 23% and 31.4% of holdings. And Russia is the leader in the export of these products.

At the same time, sooner or later, the companies-latifundists will stop developing, - continues Natalya 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. "

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 Pingri family

Total land area: 336 thousand hectares

In 1964, the Pingree heirs established the Seven Islands Land Company, which now controls the use of the family's land. The Pingri have always cared about more than just profit - even in a time when forest conservation and environmental protection were of little concern. Three-quarters of Pingri's land has the status of a specially protected natural area, which maintains the natural habitat of wild animals.

9. Stan Kronke

Total land area: 343 thousand hectares

Stan Kroenke is one of America's largest and richest real estate developers, owner of several sports teams, including London's Arsenal Football Club. Krohnke spends a large part of his fortune on land acquisition. The billionaire's total land area in Arizona, Montana and Wyoming is 4.5 times the size of New York City. In 2012, Krohnke acquired a $ 132 million, 50,000-hectare ranch off the Rocky Mountains in Montana - roughly two Birmingham. On the plot there is a house with an area of 930 square meters with a swimming pool. At the same time, the billionaire needs a ranch not so much to preserve capital and rest: first of all, elite breeds of cattle are bred here.

8. The King family

Total land area: 369 thousand hectares

The land owned by the King family is open to the public with guided tours for tourists and training farmers to farm using modern, environmentally friendly methods. Eco-tourists come to King Ranch - here you can fish, ride bicycles, watch birds. The ranch area is so vast and rich that it allows 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 the head of a large electronics company - Teledyne, Inc. In the mid-1980s, Singleton became interested in investing in land and began acquiring ranches in the states of 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 ranch management.

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 thousand hectares in the United States, the family owns an area of more than 800 thousand hectares in Canada - the Irving are considered one of the largest landowners in the world. They are also the main landowners in Maine.

5. The Reed family

Total land area: 565 thousand hectares

The Reeds, one of America's top 150 richest families, are involved in timber processing. The family has run the Green Diamond Resourse Company for five generations. The Reeds own land and forests in 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, were acquired by the Reeds in 2014. Green Diamond Resourse 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, Reedami planted a 100 millionth tree in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Green Diamond Resourse Company.

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 Reed lands. Each year, the company uses only two percent of the available land in the production cycle, on which new trees are planted immediately, so that the forest growth cycle is not interrupted.

4. Brad Kelly

Total land area: 670 thousand hectares

Big tobacco tycoon Brad Kelly owns many lands 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 from childhood. Kelly bought his first plot at the age of 17 right after leaving school. Later, investments in land became for a businessman one of the favorite ways to preserve and increase capital. Kelly has a good instinct for profitable deals - the last of the assets he acquired has doubled in price in five years. The billionaire does not run 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 foundations. One of his farms breeds dwarf buffaloes, antelopes and wild bulls, as well as tapirs, hippos and rhinos.

3. The Emerson family

Total land area: 770 thousand hectares

The Emerson family owns land and forests in California. The Emersons' lands are expanding rapidly, every year they acquire new territories - in 2015 alone, plots with a total area of 22 thousand 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 working in the timber industry for several generations. They own the second largest sawnwood company in the United States, Sierra Pacific Industries. The company also cares about the environment: every year, farmers cultivate only slightly more than one percent of the Emerson land, and new trees are planted to replace the felled trees.

Billionaires who could afford to live anywhere in the world would not trade California for anything. Archie Emerson says that since childhood, he loves to be in the forest more than anything else. There is no better rest for him than hunting or fishing in his own lands. The Emerson Forests are privately owned but open to the public. It is allowed to go fishing, hiking, cycling, but it is forbidden to pick flowers, mushrooms and berries, spend the night in tents and light fires.

2. Ted Turner

Total land area: 809 thousand hectares

Turner's favorite place where he spends a lot of time is the Vermejo Park Ranch. The billionaire welcomes guests - politicians, royalty and show business stars - in a mansion built in the middle of the ranch more than a century ago. By the way, “mere mortals” can also live here: a room in Turner's mansion can be rented for 550-650 dollars 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 wants to fish, do cycling, hiking, photo safaris 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 the bison in his park - here you can be alone with nature.

1. John Malone

Total land area: 890 thousand hectares

The first place in the ranking of the largest landowners in the United States is occupied by John Malone. The founder of Liberty Media Corporation, one of the 100 richest people in the world, owns a ranch in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado, as well as forests in Maine. Malone's territory is 150 times the size of Manhattan and three times the area of Rhode Island, with a population of one million. The billionaire's land in Maine accounts for more than five percent of the state's land area.

PutLIKEon

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 the former Minister of Agriculture of Russia Alexander Tkachev. Now it includes 60 enterprises that are engaged in crop production, feed production, meat and dairy cattle breeding, gardening, and processing of agricultural products. The products are sold by partner companies in almost all regions of the European part of Russia and Western Siberia, as well as their own chain of stores. The holding's revenue in 2018 exceeded 50 billion rubles.

2. Agroholding "Step" (including "RZ Agro")

AFK Sistema entered agriculture in 2011, having bought at auctions of the Federal Property Management Agency two companies in the Rostov region with a land bank of about 46,000 hectares. In 2012, this asset was included 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 this goal has not yet been achieved. The agricultural holding develops plant growing, 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 production of feed. She also develops the Burger & Fries restaurant chain and Miratorg brand 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 "Agriculture")

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

5. Concern "Pokrovsky"

Concern "Pokrovsky" produces electrical equipment, is engaged in the construction of premium-class residential real estate and commercial real estate development. The concern has its own retail network from 200 stores. But agribusiness is a priority. In crop production, the main crops are sugar beets and cereals. The enterprises of Pokrovsky 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 - the sown area of sugar beet. The group also includes dairy farms, meat processing and dairy plants. Dairy products from three factories of the company in Leningradskaya, Starominskaya and Bryukhovetskaya stanitsa are sold under the Kuban Milkman brand by the Yuzhny Sugar Trust (part of Dominant).

7. Group "Rusagro"

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

8. Group of agricultural enterprises "Resource"

The main activity is poultry farming. Today, Resource, founded in 2003, is one of the largest producers of broiler meat in Russia. The enterprises of the group also grow crops, produce compound 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. Resource products are sold by 20 distributors and 600 wholesale partners.

9. "Avangard-Agro"

The company was founded in 2004 by the owner of the bank "Avangard" Kirill Minovalov. It specializes in the cultivation of barley, wheat, sunflower, sugar beet, buckwheat and corn, there is also a meat and dairy business. 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 Aleksey 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"

Established in 1992 by Sergei Kislov, the company was initially engaged in the production and export of flour. In 1999, the company launched an oil production plant with a capacity of 1000 tons per day. This became the main business of Yug Rusi. Now the company is the largest producer of bottled vegetable oil and covers the needs 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, mayonnaise and sauces.

11. "Volgo-Don Agroinvest"

Former top manager of Lukoil Sergey Kukura and his son Alexander have been working in the agricultural industry for over 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, Kukury increased land bank having bought from the Swedish Black Earth Farming 246,000 hectares in the Kursk and Tambov regions. The main activity of the company is the cultivation, storage and sale of grain.

12. "Econiva-APK"

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

13. GC "Svetly"

The history of the Svetlyi group of companies began in the Soviet Union with a state farm of the same name in the north of the Rostov region, cultivating 6,500 hectares. In 1993, a partnership was created on its basis, in 1998 it 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 Tatiana - 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 company's land bank then did not exceed 30,000 hectares. Now the agricultural holding is engaged in crop production, animal husbandry and sugar production, until recently - in seed production. But in April 2018, Deripaska's agricultural holding was the only Krasnodar enterprise that came under US sanctions, because of this, the owner of the Semyonovodstvo Kuban NPO, which was part of the association, changed. The new owner was a company associated with cousin Deripaska by 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 the largest producer of rice and packaged cereals in Russia. In 2018, the company received a record rice harvest of 222,000 tonnes 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 35% of shares in the capital of LLC Yuzhnye Zemli, which is part of National.

16. Group of companies "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 consists of seven enterprises, including a creamery, sugar factories and the South-Eastern Agrogroup. ASB Group of Companies 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 agricultural cluster 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 the merger of several Krasnodar agricultural enterprises, its land bank exceeded 50,000 hectares. Initially, the lands of "Agrogard" were collected for testing fertilizers, which are produced by the main asset of billionaire Andrei Guryev - the company "Fosagro", but over time the agricultural company has grown into an independent business. Now "Agrogard" operates in five regions of Russia, the main directions are crop growing 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 director general, and in the course of privatization, the Babaev family bought a controlling stake in the plant. Now Cherkizovo is one of the largest producers of meat and meat products in Russia, last year the company harvested 480,000 tons of grain in its fields, 24% less than a year earlier. Last year, the company earned 102.6 billion rubles in revenue, with 7% of plant growing accounted for.

19. "Agroterra"

Out of 300,000 hectares of its land, Agroterra cultivates 200,000 hectares and, with this indicator, takes 18th place in the list of leaders in Russian arable land. The company was founded in 2008 by NHC Capital Inc., an investment company founded by a US citizen with Ukrainian roots, George Rohr. Rohr started investing in assets in the territory the former USSR in the early 1990s, in 2012, the Ukrainian Forbes wrote that his companies 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-Ton was founded in 2004 by Alexey Martynov, who handed over his package 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 harvested 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 5300 hectares of land. Since 2007, Bio-Ton has returned to circulation over 105,000 hectares of fallow lands.

Few people know that the director Baz Luhrmann did not accidentally offer the actress Nicole Kidman to play the refined lady Sarah Ashley in the film "Australia". After all, the actress is not only his favorite: the role of a rich aristocratic landowner adequately reflects Kidman's current state.

According to a New Statesman study The family of the Australian woman who moved to Hollywood is today the eighth largest private landowner in the world and the first outside of the monarchs. Its possessions stretch across the entire Green Continent, and the total area owned by the Kidmans exceeds the area of 90 countries in the world and amounts to 24 million acres, or approximately 9.71 million hectares. Only one of the plots belonging to the clan (it houses the world's largest cattle farm, Anna Creek), exceeds the territory of such a rather large European country as Belgium.

But the most amazing thing about 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 farmers-emigrants from Adelaide, born in 1857, at the age of 13 ran away from home 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 Butcher shop in New South Wales. Things were going well, and soon Sydney was already into the horse trade. And at the end of the 19th century, at the age of 29, he already acquired his first large plot of land in Owen Springs. It was with him that the Kidmans' land empire began.

As Sydney 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 river beds: this would allow her to drive livestock across the continent and deliver it as close as possible to to the buyer. Obsessed with this idea, the businessman began to buy up 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.... Huge spaces gave the cattle-breeding business flexibility: if a drought struck at one end of the continent, Kidman simply moved herds to another place, while his small competitors, who did not have sufficient land resources, suffered losses and one after another and went bankrupt. By 1935, Sidney Kidman had become one of the richest men in Australia and her largest landowner(about England, he sarcastically said that he would not mind turning one of the British Isles into a personal "cattle paddock").

But despite all my fortune, until the end of his days he kept the habits of a poor farmer. He could easily afford to buy his own train, but instead he always traveled the country in second class - and that, in his words, only because "there is no third class in Australia."

At the time of Kidman's death in 1935, he owned about 3% of the territory of Australia. Today, Sydney's landowning empire is about three times smaller than it was eighty years ago. But this does not prevent the fourth generation of Kidmans from successfully fighting weather adversities and repelling the attacks of developers and speculators on their vast properties.

Last year family business , part of which is owned by one of the most beautiful and stylish women in Hollywood, has cumulatively earned more than $ 2.55 million in profits. It may not be very much for a modern high-tech company, but more than enough for an investor who invests money in the most valuable resource on the planet - earth.

To be more precise, formally neither the Kidmans nor anyone else in Australia owns the land. This whole country belongs to Queen Elizabeth II, like Canada, the British Isles and many other territories. But really, of course

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

The largest private landowner in the world is Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain - she owns 6.6 billion acres or 2 billion 670 million hectares, about one sixth of the earth's land mass.

King of Saudi Arabia Abdullah 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 Roman Catholic Church, owns 177 million acres, or just over 71.5 million hectares.

Australian landowners ranked 8 out of 24 in The New Statesman's largest private landowners ranking. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these are the same families of former former livestock breeders, like the Kidmans.

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

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