The ninth annual Overview of Russia’s Largest Agricultural Landholders includes 66 companies. The total area of the Overview 2021 is about 15.4m ha.

The events of last year upended life as we know it and affected all global economy sectors without exceptions, however agriculture has proved to be quite resilient in many aspects, in spite of increasing costs of production, hindered deliveries of seeds, crop protection agents, machinery. For the most part, last year acted as an accelerator for the development, prompt strategy changes and production growth in medium-size and large companies with effective management and as an incentive for new investors to enter the agricultural sector. Rising commodity prices, the recent vigorous development of agriculture in Russia have triggered a lot of interest to crop production assets.

Due to the excitement in crop production M&As and land purchases (in spite of a palpable increase of farmland prices this year) many companies in the list considerably increased their land portfolios.

First time in the history of this Overview the list and the positions in the TOP-10 have not changed in spite of the increase in the farmland of Agrocomplex (+7k ha), a significant gain by EkoNiva-APK (+31k ha) and a slight decrease of the land assets owned by Rusagro (-6k ha).

Stepp Agroholding keeps gaining new land assets, but stays in the 6th spot, and the other companies of the 10 leaders show no changes, with the exception of minor land portfolio corrections by AGROINVEST Group and Avangard-Agro.

The following companies did not make the cut this year: Plodorodiye (a crop production company owned by Acron) due to the reduction of its land assets, Rostovskaya niva, which was acquired by GAP Resurs, and Ivolga-Holding. Having a one-year break, Agrico is again in the list. Besides, there are 7 other new companies including the showstopper of the year – Sibagro Group. The group has expanded its farmland assets quite dramatically and debuted in the TOP-20.

Over 9 years, the Overview has expanded from 30 to 66 companies, and its total farmland area has increased by more than 8m ha – from 7.2m ha to 15.4m ha.