It’s easy to think of Florida as a string of little beachside towns and white-sand beaches with a few big cities, the occasional speedway or theme park here and there. But there are hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and timber across the state and someone’s holding the deed. Who is the biggest private landowner in the Sunshine State?
By a fair chunk, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns (through an auxiliary, Farmland Reserve, and other organizations) more than 679,000 acres, depending on where you look.
The LDS church has long had a large presence in Florida, having started the sprawling Deseret Ranch with about 50,000 acres in 1950 to have resources for food production in times of need. Through hard work, their ranchers grew it into the most productive cow-calf ranch in the United States, covering more than 290,000 acres in Central Florida.
In 2014, the LDS church became Florida’s largest landowner when it bought nearly 400,000 acres of timberland in the Panhandle region from St. Joe Company.
Here are the top five landowners in Florida. Acreage numbers are approximate, based on public info and media sources.
1. Farmland Reserve (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): 627,600-679,000 acres
“Farmland Reserve invests in and operates agricultural assets to generate long-term value for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the company’s website says.
Religious organizations are not obligated to publicly report income or assets, so a firm number is hard to pin down. According to Florida Trend, the LDS church, through Farmland Reserve and other companies, operates the 295,000-acre Deseret Ranch in Orange, Osceola and Brevard counties; Deseret Cattle & Timber, 330,000 acres in Bay, Gulf, Calhoun, Liberty, Gadsden and Franklin counties; and another 2,600 acres in Suwannee County leased to local farmers.
But the original 2014 timberland buy was for 382,000 acres, and the church bought 41,554 more acres in Florida and six other states in a $289 million deal in October 2024. World Population Review puts it at 672,000 acres.
The church has long planned to create communities in Florida, with plans for neighborhood developments in Orange County looking ahead for six decades. Last year, the church asked the city of Orlando to annex 52,493 acres in east Orange County, which would have increased Orlando’s land area by 69%. It was halted by a city-county agreement.
2. Four Rivers Land & Timber Co., 561,000 acres
Hungarian-born Thomas Peterffy, named 2025’s second-richest man in Florida by Forbes, arrived penniless in the U.S. at age 21 speaking no English. But he used his programming skills to pioneer electronic trading on Wall Street. Peterffy, a Palm Beach resident, founded the brokerage firm Interactive Brokers Group. As of Oct. 17, Forbes pegs his net worth at $77.8 billion.
In 2015, Peterffy bought more than 561,000 acres of timberland in Florida’s Big Bend, the largest contiguous privately held property in Florida, Florida Trend said, covering half of Taylor County and spreading into neighboring counties. He has since bought more acreage in Florida, according to Land Report.
Peterffy also owns 33,000 acres of Highlands County ranchland.
3. Rayonier, 397,000 acres leased and owned
Timber company Rayonier owns property along Interstate 95 between Daytona Beach and Savannah, Georgia. The company launched a mixed-use development in Nassau County, Wildlight, in 2016, and has talked to other local governments in northeast Florida about more development.
4. Mosiac, 368,000 acres
Phosphate mining company Mosiac has holdings in DeSoto, Hardee, Hillsborough, Manatee and Polk counties, including land it owns and land on which it has mineral rights or mining agreements, Florida Trend said. Most of it has been in company hands for over 50 years.
5. Lykes Brothers, 339,971 acres
Lykes Brothers was founded in 1900 and once included Peoples Gas, Lykes hot dogs and meats, Sunkist juice, an insurance company, a steamship line and the state’s fourth largest bank. Now it sticks with ranching, with one of the largest cow-calf operations in the country.
Most of its Florida land is in Glades County, where it owns 269,011 acres, according to the county Property Appraiser’s office, with another 69,733 acres in Highland County.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Who are Florida’s largest landowners? The top private landowner owns up to 679,000 acres
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
