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Private investments in land improvement can sharply increase the productivity of farming and accelerate local economic development. The provision of new irrigation and drainage systems, land clearing and levelling, roads and other infrastructure often has economies of scale beyond the reach of family farmers and beyond the capacity of governments. This paper surveys over 15 historical and on-going examples of private investments in frontier land development across Asia, the Americas and Africa, finding that the most successful cases involved investors who aimed to subdivide and sell parcels for individual family farms. The state generally played an important regulatory role, providing some public goods and making land concessions conditional on rapid transition to family farming. The on-going operation of large farms by the investors has generally succeeded only in specific circumstances, typically around scale economies in agroprocessing.