Who owns the largest amount of land in the world

Background: The Emir is an inheritor to the throne of Kuwait and has managed to hold onto the country, and his own land with periodic help from U. Part of the land that the Emir does not control is American military property that serves as the largest American base in the region. Land: All 11, square miles of Lesotho, including the country's diamond mines. Background: King Letsie is his second stint as Lesotho's monarch after being replaced by his exiled father and then being deposed upon his return, then taking the throne again after his old man's death less than a year later.

And while the monarchy in Lesotho is mostly ceremonial, Letsie retains legal title over the nation's lands. Land: All 15, agriculturally lush and unique square miles of his Kingdom of Bhutan.

Background: The former student of Philips Andover Academy was coronated in and has been the force behind Bhutan nascent democratization. Background: The heir to his father, the wildly popular King Hussein, and onetime extra on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is one of The United States' most loyal allies in the region and is currently facing his own realities of the upheavals throughout the Middle East. Land: The 57, miles that make up Nepal, meaning that he also, technically owns Mount Everest.

Background: Despite the country's move to a Maoist Republic political structure in the 's, the royal family retains nominal ownership of all Nepal. Gyandera is a titular head of state but antithetically friendly with the socialist government. Land: The mostly desert nation of Oman, which also includes the ports along the Coast of Sur, a major point of entry for trade in the region. Also, that awesome chair.

Background: Qaboos is the ruler of Oman and the head of its military. He is a fairly Westernized leader in the context of his neighbors, even allowing women to serve in his cabinet, referred to as the "Diwan. In Catholic dogma, all land does indeed come from God, and for many centuries the Pope had nearly as many acres as Elizabeth II has today — between 20 and 30 per cent of Europe and the same proportion of South America.

The estimated total of land held by the Pope is around million acres. At eight on the list of individual and family landowners are the farms and ranches of the Kidmans in Australia, to whom the actress Nicole Kidman is related. What the Kidmans possess is a mixture of specific Crown leases for fixed periods of time and freehold leases for indefinite periods. The first American on the list, Ted Turner, is at number As Australia demonstrates, a small population can create huge landholdings if there is plenty of available land.

Despite its vast size, America has a relatively large population in relation to land availability, especially for agricultural use. Alongside the Kidman holdings, there are no fewer than eight other Australian ranches on the list, the smallest of which, the Colonial Agricultural Company, is over 4. These huge holdings, which are are not replicated in either the home of free-market capitalism, the US, or Canada, suggest that economic prosperity at a corporate level is not formally impeded by feudal structures, so long as there is flexibility in their application, matched by entrepreneurial aggression in forcing that flexibility to operate.

The relative failure of the US to develop huge agricultural corporations probably had much to do with its populist form of capitalism, combined with the unusually large quantity of land, most of it in potential farming areas held by the federal government.

American populism is inherently, if ineffectively, anti-monopoly corporatist, especially over land. The federal government doled out land only under popular pressure in the Homestead Act of and generally used a basic unit of acres per homestead. In Australia, there was no such form of popular constraint and no instinct to endow Australians with viable farm units.

However, what it should alert us to — and the place to look is Russia — is the formation of huge land corporations that will interdict any attempt to solve the combined problem of deindustrialisation and population growth through a more effective use and distribution of land. The tables accompanying this article have never been compiled or published before.

What they show is a world dominated by ancient structures of land ownership, none of which reflect the modern world, its people or their needs. The rest of us, especially in the industrialised world, need secure shelter in the form of an owned, not rented, home. There is one dominant worldwide trend and that is the movement of people from rural to urban areas, which began in Europe in the 18th century and is being replicated in Africa and Asia today.

We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Reject Read More. Necessary Always Enabled. 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 , cows are kept on the farm and around 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.