The annual Overview of Russia’s Largest Agricultural Landholders in May 2020 includes 61  companies having 14.2m  ha under control, which is 779k  ha more than last year. The overall land portfolio of the  TOP-5 has grown by almost 140k ha.

The very first Overview of Russia’s Largest Agricultural Landholders, which has been traditionally published by BEFL annually since 2013, showed just 30 companies having 7.2m ha under control. Over the last seven years the number of companies having over 100k  ha under control has doubled.

The Overview 2020 shows remarkable changes in the farmland portfolios of the participants and their positions in the chart. The most prolific companies in terms of acquiring farmland last year (since May 2019) were Stepp Agroholding + RZ Agro (+141k ha), EkoNiva-APK (+95k ha) and KDV  Agroholding (+65k ha). The fastest position changer this year is Agronova-L, which moved up 12 lines, the leader on the bottom end is Solnechnye Produkty (down 18 lines). There are seven new companies this year, and two drop-outs – Agrico and Russian Agrarian Group.

As a bonus to the main chart, the overview shows the latest updated information from Rosreestr regarding the ownership of land in Russia stating a considerable increase in the share of farmland owned by legal entities compared to last year. There is also brief analytics of changing planted areas of key crops from 2012, highlighting a massive extension of oilseeds areas in Siberia, the Far East and the Central Russia; a significant increase of winter grain areas in the South of Russia and a sharp cut down of spring grain in Siberia. Another bonus is an overview of the key announced M&A transaction in 2019 targeting agricultural assets with large farmland portfolios.