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Key Points
Table of Contents
Farmland is a solid investment option that offers steady returns and a hedge against inflation while diversifying your portfolio.
Crowdfunding platforms and farmland REITs are making it easier than ever to invest in farmland, which is a finite asset class that will not be available forever.
Bill Gates is currently the US's most significant private farmland owner, with 242,000 acres of farmland in 18 states. His foundation promotes advanced eco-friendly farming and the sustainability of farmland.
Ted Turner owns 17 ranches with cattle in several US states and Argentina, totaling more than 45,000 bison. He has made a mission to promote ecological sustainability and supports many environmental projects battling climate change.
The Resnick family owns 192,000 farmland acres in California and Texas, primarily growing mandarins and other citrus fruit, pistachios, almonds, and pomegranates, with their Wonderful Company worth $4.2 billion.
Farmland is an asset that has held value for thousands of years. However, only recently has this investment become “trendy.” Deemed a boring investment by many, farmland has a lot of desirable traits that make it a solid option for diversifying your portfolio.
Farmland investments feature steady and consistent returns that outpace the S&P 500. Not only does it help diversify your portfolio, but it also protects against inflation as it's a physical asset.
As a finite asset class, farmland will not be available forever. Meanwhile, crowdfunding platforms and farmland REITs are making it easier than ever to scoop up farmland.
Want to own farmland yourself?Get started withAcreTrader!
Tony Robbins famously stated that the most successful people leave clues. In other words, individuals can mimic the actions of the ultra-wealthy to build a wealth of their own. And for the ultra-wealthy, farmland is no secret.
In this article, we review the largest farmland owners in the US.
Top Farmland Owners In The US
Farmland Owners
Total Acres
1. Bill Gates
242,000
2. Ted Turner
+200,000
3. Stewart & Lynda Resnick
192,000
4. Offutt Family
190,000
5. The Fanjul Family
152,000
6. Boswell Family
150,000
7. Stan Kroenke
124,000
8. Gaylon Lawrence JR
115,000
9. John Malone
100,000
10. Simplot Family
82,500
1. Bill Gates
Here's a familiar name: Bill Gates. According to Forbes, and at the writing of this post, Gates is currently number 6 on the list of wealthiest people in the world.
Bill Gates, of course, amassed his fortune primarily through Microsoft. However, he is also an avid investor in several asset classes. In addition, he currently owns about 242,000 acres of farmland in 18 states.
We do not know precisely how Gates uses his farmland for actively growing crops or whether any of the land is being set aside for conservation. However, one of his foundations promotes advanced eco-friendly farming and the sustainability of farmland.
Gates kept his farmland purchases private, but it was recently revealed that he had amassed enough acreage to be the largest private farmland owner in the county.
His most significant holdings are in: Louisiana (69,100 acres), Arkansas (48,000 acres), Nebraska 20,500 acres.
Buying farmland hasn’t been the only way Gates has supported agriculture. In 2010, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation allocated $306 million in grants to aid high-yield, sustainable farming for farmers with smaller lots in the Sahara Desert in Africa and South Asia.
This foundation has also funneled money into researching and developing so-called super crops that can flourish even during climate change.
2. Ted Turner
Ted Turner, famously known as the founder of CNN, is also a significant farmland owner. He owns 17 ranches – 14 in the western U.S. and three in Argentina. While farmland makes up a large chunk of his net worth, he has had his hand in several business ventures. In addition to CNN, he found WTBS and purchased World Champion Wrestling. He even has an association with the Atlanta Braves.
Ted Turner owns Ranches with cattle in Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Argentina.
Turner has made a mission to promote ecological sustainability and joined in on Warren Buffet and Bill Gates' pledge to donate most of their fortune to the charity upon passing.
His ranches include more than 45,000 bison.
In addition, Turner Ranches promote and support many forward-thinking environmental projects battling climate change.
These include timber management to protect forest land, water conservation from natural resources, and replanting many native plant species on land destroyed by development.
3. Stewart & Lynda Resnick
Stewart Resnick was always in the right place at the right time. He launched top-selling brands like Teleflora flower delivery services and The Franklin Mint Company.
In the mid-1970s, Stewart took a chance and followed a hunch to buy 2,500 acres of oranges and lemons in California that had gone bankrupt and were being sold quickly and cheaply. After that, he found other land in fast-sell situations with owners eager to sell at rock-bottom prices.
Fast forward to today, when Resnick’s so-called Wonderful Company is worth $4.2 billion. The company produces a list of high-quality, healthy products such as Wonderful Halos Mandarins, Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Almonds, Fiji water, and POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice on their acreage.
This couple owns an astounding 192,000 farmland acres in California and Texas.
Primarily, on this farmland, they grow mandarins and other citrus fruit, pistachios, almonds, and pomegranates
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4. Offutt Family
The Offutt family farm started in 1960 when Ron Offutt and his father began growing potatoes. Today, the farm operations are led by Ron's daughter, Christi, the company chair. Her husband, Keith McGovern, currently serves as President of the company.
Today, Ron's daughter, Christi, is the company Chair, and Ron is Chairman Emeritus, while his son-in-law, Keith McGovern, serves as President of the company.
This family owns 190,000 farmland acres in Fargo, North Dakota.
Primarily, they grow potatoes.
Always on the lookout for sustaining the environment, the family works with research teams at North Dakota and Minnesota’s leading colleges to plan, build and develop earth-friendly crops that hold onto their high quality.
The Offutts also own RDO Equipment, which sells and services agriculture, construction, environmental, positioning, surveying, and irrigation equipment from well-known manufacturers such as John Deere.
5. The Fanjul Family
The Fanjuls launched their farming business in the mid-1800s and produced sugarcane for over a century in their homeland of Cuba. But history interrupted their thriving business when the Cuban Revolution occurred, leaving Fidel Castro in charge. During this time, the Fanjul family lost all their land and savings. So they left Cuba and relocated to South Florida, where Alfonso and Pepe Fanjul worked hard to start a new company producing sugarcane and other row crops. This company was called Florida Crystals Corp. and is located in Florida’s Everglade Agricultural land.
This family primarily grows sugarcane on 152,000 farmland acres in South Florida.
Today’s harvests yield Florida Crystals 5.9 million tons of sugarcane on 152,000 acres, used to make 676,000 tons of raw sugar and 30 million gallons of blackstrap molasses.
The family has sugar and rice mills and a sugar refinery. However, they own and run North America’s largest biomass power plant.
6. Boswell Family
This family story begins when James Boswell II. At 29, Boswell’s uncle passed away and left 50,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley to James.
For the next 50 years, Boswell dominated land in California’s Central Valley, tripling his family’s holdings. Then, he boldly moved to bring much-needed water to the dry land by building dams and diverting rivers to irrigate agriculture. This allowed the farm to grow an enormous cotton crop, for which they remained a key producer. The Pima cotton is used by high-end apparel companies such as Land’s End for super soft clothing.
Along the way, Boswell established the J.G. Boswell Tomato Company, which follows fresh farm-to-table preparation. The company grows tomatoes from seeds to maturity, harvests them, and oversees processing.
They own 150,000 farmland acres in the Central California Valley.
Primarily, tomatoes and cotton are grown.
7. Stan Kroenke
Stan Kroenke is an American billionaire nicknamed Silent Stan for his desire to stay out of the spotlight. He amassed his fortune primarily from his real estate empire. He also owns Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, a holding company for several sports teams, including the Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Rams.
In 1974, he married Anne Walton, the daughter of Bud Walton – Co-founder of Walmart.
He owns 124,000 acres in Montana.
Kroenke is a real estate mogul who owns more than a million acres of land across the US, including a Montana ranch spanning 124,000 acres. Kroenke is also the owner of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.
He came from humble beginnings. His first job was cleaning up at Mora Lumber Co, which belonged to his father.
8. Gaylon Lawrence JR
Gaylon Lawrence Jr. is the CEO of The Lawrence Group, which his father founded. The Lawrence Group is involved with a massive list of money-makers, from commercial real estate to banking to agriculture.
Gaylon Lawrence, who passed away in 2012, created a massive holding on farmland throughout his life. His 30,000 acres of citrus farms made him one of Florida's top fruit producers. But, like many in this list, his fortune was not only amassed from farmland. He also owned Airconditioning Distributors, one of the largest privately owned heating, cooling, and ventilation distributors. After passing, his son Gaylon Lawrence Jr. took over operations.
Lawrence's land is primarily found in Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri.
Lawrence owns 115,000 acres across America.
He grows everything from wheat to corn to fresh vegetables on this land.
The Lawrence Group’s agriculture department includes 15,000 acres, from California to Florida, and a variety of other locations, particularly in the southern Delta, where crops flourish. In addition, they continue to buy farmland each year.
9. John Malone
Like others in this list, John Malone did not necessarily earn his fortune from farmland. Instead, he was CEO of Tele-Communication Inc, TCI, which was sold to AT&T for $50 billion.
John Malone owns nearly 2.2 million acres of land across the US. However, of that, roughly 100,000 acres are farmland. He also holds multiple international real estate holdings, like the Humewood Castle in Ireland.
One hundred thousand acres in Colorado, Wyoming, Maine, and New Mexico.
John Malone owns the Silver Spur Ranches, a cattle and beef company that includes the Silver Spur Ranch in Wyoming, Bell Ranch and the TO Ranch in New Mexico, and two other ranches in Walden and Kiowa, Colorado.
10. Simplot Family
Founder Jack Simplot came from an Idaho farming family. In 1968 luck and intelligent thinking came together when he signed a contract with McDonald’s owner Ray Kroc to be their source of frozen French fries.
Before the ink was barely dry on the contract, the family farm’s output exploded as it became the #1 supplier of one of America’s go-to snacks.
After passing away in 2008, Jack Simplot’s family now manages a $2.5 billion agricultural company that dominates the farming world. Along with farming, the family owns ranching and cattle production, food processing, phosphate mining, fertilizer manufacturing, and other staples.
This group owns 82,500 farmland acres in western Idaho and eastern Washington.
It is recognized as the agricultural powerhouse of the United States. California's crops account for around 73% of the state's agricultural revenue, with livestock commodities accounting for the remaining 27%, allowing it to surpass all other states in terms of farm income.
It is recognized as the agricultural powerhouse of the United States. California's crops account for around 73% of the state's agricultural revenue, with livestock commodities accounting for the remaining 27%, allowing it to surpass all other states in terms of farm income.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is not only one of the richest men in the world, with a net worth of $190 billion at the time of this writing, but also he is one of the biggest private landowners in the United States. Bezos owns 420,000 acres. Much of his land is in West Texas.
Iowa has some of the most fertile soils in the world. this “black gold” is found in northeast Iowa's gently rolling terrain, molded by climate, water and plant life.
Texas had the most farms in the United States in 2021 followed by Missouri and Iowa. Texas accounted for roughly 12% of the farms in the United States in 2021. Thirty nine (39) states had 12,000 or more farms in 2021.
The United States had 895.3 million acres of land in farms in 2021. Texas had the most land in farms in the United States in 2021 followed by Montana and Kansas.
People own most farmland. Some 2.6 million owners are individuals or families, and they own more than two thirds of all farm acreage. Fewer than 32,500 non family held corpor ations own farmland, and they own less than 5 percent of all U.S. farmland.
The Microsoft co-founder is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the country with some 269,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last year's edition of the Land Report 100, an annual survey of the nation's largest landowners.
Food prices have skyrocketed. Farmland owners benefit from this upswing. This makes it a highly effective inflation hedge — even better than most stocks and bonds. So it's not a big surprise why billionaires have invested (heavily) in the space in recent years.
The 2022 Land Report 100, compiled each year by The Land Report magazine, released its annual list of landowners who own the most acres in the United States. The nation's largest private landowners are the Emmerson family in California who own over 2.4 million acres.
American billionaires are buying large ranches across Wyoming, Montana and Texas, creating a new class of luxury assets, writes Bloomberg. Why it matters: The wealthy are often buying the land from "asset-rich, cash poor" small farmers whose families have owned the land for decades.
Mollisols found in the Midwestern U.S. are the best for agriculture due to the grasslands that were present thousands of years ago. These prairies produced strong and fertile soils because after each year, the grasses would breakdown and contribute nutrients to the ground.
The best states for farmland in the US include Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, Texas, Iowa, Kentucky, Wyoming, and California. Consider factors like profitability, cost of operation, infrastructure, and availability when selecting a location.
The most fertile soils on Earth are the so-called black soils or chernozems. These are found in some areas in North America, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia. It took several millennia and a specific climate and steppe vegetation for them to form.
Texas. Texas tops the list of states offering cheap farmland. With its lengthy hot seasons and mild winters, the Lone Star State is especially ideal for growing cotton. The state is also a big beef cattle producer, so the price per acre may be lower due to the high demand for grazing land.
Dairy Farming: Dairy farming is one of the most profitable agricultural business ideas. Aside from milk, it also produces manure. There is a high demand for organic dairy products all year round such as milk, cheese, curd, cream and so much more.
The Great Plains of the central United States—the Corn Belt—is one of the most fertile regions on Earth, producing more than 10 billion bushels of corn each year.
What US states produce the most food? (Ranking 1-50)What US states produce the most food? (Ranking 1-50) California ranks first in the U.S. for agricultural cash receipts followed by Iowa, Texas, Nebraska and Illinois.
Qin Yinglin is a Chinese businessman who founded the Muyuan Foodstuff Company, which is one of China's largest pig breeding and pork processing firms. As of 2021, Qin's net worth is estimated at over $20 billion, making him one of the wealthiest farmers in the world.
The Dane County Farmers' Market is America's largest producers-only farmers' market. It is held from April to November on Saturday mornings on the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin and on Wednesday mornings on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
In 2021, the average U.S. farm household had $2,100,879 in wealth. Households operating commercial farms had $3.0 million in total wealth at the median, substantially more than the households of residence or intermediate farms. ERS divides farm households into four groups based on relative levels of income and wealth.
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.
China owns roughly 384,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land, according to a 2021 report from the Department of Agriculture. Of that, 195,000 acres, worth almost $2 billion when purchased, are owned by 85 Chinese investors, which could be individuals, companies or the government.
While owning farmland can be a very profitable venture over the long-term, farmland will typically never cash flow when purchased with substantial borrowed capital.
Now, one can consider farmland simply as an alternative investment. Farmland produces returns both with rent yields and appreciation in the farmland's value. So these investments can work somewhat like dividend stocks, with gains from income and capital gains.
1. EMMERSON FAMILY. The nation's largest private landowners, California's Emmerson family, are a prime example of this trend. Through their Sierra Pacific Industries, the Emmersons increased their landholdings by more than 100 square miles to over 2.4 million acres.
One of the largest landowners in the US is real estate tycoon Stan Kroenke, who owns nearly 1.7 million acres of land scattered over seven states. Ranches, forestry, hunting preserves, and several significant developments are among Kroenke's holdings.
Corn Ranch, or Launch Site One, is a spaceport in the West Texas town of Van Horn, Texas. The 670-square-kilometer (165,000-acre) land parcel was purchased by Internet billionaire Jeff Bezos.
High net worth investors typically keep millions of dollars or even tens of millions in cash in their bank accounts to cover bills and unexpected expenses. Their balances are often way above the $250,000 FDIC insured limit.
Buying farmland, waiting for the value to appreciate, and then selling it is the most basic form of farmland investing. It's simple: land values rise, and the land produces crops, which provides you with income. The higher the income, the more valuable the farmland.
The ideal blend of soil for plant growth is called loam. Often referred to as topsoil or black dirt by landscape companies, loam is a mixture of sand, clay, and silt. The estimated mixture is 40% sand – 40% silt – 20% clay.
Punjab is the most fertile state on earth. It is best to produce wheat, sugarcane, rice, vegetables, and fruits in Punjab. Punjab's other name is the Granary of India and India's breadbasket. Around 93% of the total productive land used to produce food grain.
Soils are becoming severely degraded due to a combination of intensive farming practices and natural processes. As the layer of fertile topsoil thins, it gets increasingly difficult to grow crops for food.
Nearly a quarter of the world's most fertile soil, known as Chernozem, is located in Ukraine. Chernozem is black soil rich in organic matter called 'humus,' which is made up of decomposed plants. More than 65 percent of arable land in Ukraine is composed of Chernozem deposits, making it ideal for farming.
Serpentine soil is an uncommon soil type produced by weathered ultramafic rock such as peridotite and its metamorphic derivatives such as serpentinite.
Chernozem is the rich black soil that makes Ukraine one of the most fertile places on Earth. It's a soil that was formed from very fine mineral particles that prehistoric winds carried away from ancient glacial beds. “The wind acted as a huge filter,” says Dr. Léon Hardy, a Canadian geomorphologist in Ukraine.
Oklahoma. Oklahoma currently sits at the lowest cost per acre among the best states for farmland in the US, so this is another state to consider when looking to buy land for agricultural purposes.
The five states with the highest value of crop sales are California, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. With its large horticultural sector, California's overall crop value of more than $33 billion (in 2017) is about 59 percent higher than that of Illinois, the second-ranked State.
The most fertile soils on Earth are the so-called black soils or chernozems. These are found in some areas in North America, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia. It took several millennia and a specific climate and steppe vegetation for them to form.
Farms often receive modest amounts of income from activities closely related to farming operations including revenue from patronage dividends and relatively small amounts of custom work. Many farms typically have between $10 and $15 per acre of related income.
25,000 acres of farmland in SW Arkansas – That's almost twice the size of Manhattan! Goldcrest Farms, one of the largest farms in the US, is located in Miller County, Arkansas, along the riverbanks of the Red River and 28 miles from Texarkana and Interstate 30.
The best states for farmland in the US include Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, Texas, Iowa, Kentucky, Wyoming, and California. Consider factors like profitability, cost of operation, infrastructure, and availability when selecting a location.
Mollisols are the best soils for farming because they contain large quantities of organic matter. Mollisols found in the Midwestern U.S. are the best for agriculture due to the grasslands that were present thousands of years ago.
The largest United States crop in terms of total production is corn, the majority of which is grown in a region known as the Corn Belt. The second largest crop grown in the United States is soybeans.
Livestock is probably the most common way farmers make money from their land. And while animals have a few more expenses and a higher overhead, they usually bring in top dollar in terms of net income.
Nearly a quarter of the world's most fertile soil, known as Chernozem, is located in Ukraine. Chernozem is black soil rich in organic matter called 'humus,' which is made up of decomposed plants. More than 65 percent of arable land in Ukraine is composed of Chernozem deposits, making it ideal for farming.
Introduction: My name is Kareem Mueller DO, I am a vivacious, super, thoughtful, excited, handsome, beautiful, combative person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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