Land is a sought-after property, and very important for farmers. However, there are also many actors outside the agricultural sector for whom land is important, but there are quite a few farmers in the list of largest landowners.
However, the list of largest landowners below is disproportionate to the Dutch areas. However, it is the poor comfort for farmers in the Netherlands that the land price is nowhere higher than in the Netherlands.
The largest landowner in the world is not a major oil magnate or a real estate investor. No, it's the Roman Catholic Church. According to lovemoney.com, the church owns more than 70 million hectares. An area that is larger than France. It is not just about agricultural land, but also about land in the most expensive locations in London, Paris and New York.
If we have to appoint 1 person who has the most land in the world, we will end up with Gina Rinehart. She is the richest woman in Australia, and in 2012 she was the richest woman in the world. As a mining magnate, she has a huge amount of land in Australia and the United States (US). The land in her possession is used, among other things, for keeping cattle of the Wagyu breed. Her agricultural land portfolio has expanded considerably in recent years.
The largest agricultural landowner is the Chinese dairy farm 'Mudanjiang City Mega Farm', which is owned by Russian and Chinese owners. More than 9 million hectares belong to the company. This is a piece of land that is larger than Portugal and 100,000 cows are kept on the farm and around 800 million liters of milk are produced annually.
The Australian Agricultural Company, Australia's oldest agricultural company, owns no less than 7 million hectares of land. This mainly concerns cattle farming. The largest shareholder in this company is the British Joe Lewis, the number 12 in the list of the richest people in the UK.
The last one in this top 5 of the largest landowners is once again a large Australian farmer. Jumbuck Pastoral Company is owned by the MacLachlan family. The company is the largest producer of wool in Australia. Landowners in the US also have a huge amount of land; think of media magnate John Malone, who owns nearly 1 million hectares. The largest arable farm would be the Brazilian 'El Tejar', where almost 1.1 million hectares of soy and maize are grown. They are numbers that are far from the Dutch farmer. The areas of the largest arable farms in the Netherlands do not exceed 2,000 hectares.
