Forbes recently released its 2019 ranking of the wealthiest Americans. The annual list tracks the 400 richest people in the country by net worth.

While their collective wealth hit a record-breaking $2.96 trillion (a 2.2% increase from 2018), 27 billionaires dropped off the list this year.

Five of those drop-offs were due to deaths (including David Koch, the former vice president of Koch Industries, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen), but the remaining 22 fell off the list because they saw their net worths drop below $2.1 billion, the minimum net worth to qualify for inclusion.

And four of the billionaires who saw their fortunes fall came from one company: Cargill.

Alexandra Daitch, Sarah MacMillan, Lucy Stitzer, and Katherine Tanner are among the billionaires who fell off the list of wealthiest Americans in 2019. Each currently has a net worth of $1.7 billion, down from $2.1 billion each in 2018.

The four women are sisters, the daughters of W. Duncan MacMillan, who was a Cargill board member for three decades and who died in 2006 as the 216th-richest man in America, Forbes previously reported.

MacMillan was the great-grandson of W.W. Cargill, who founded Cargill in 1865 at the tail-end of the Civil War and grew a single grain warehouse in Iowa to what it is today: the largest privately-owned company in America.

In 2014, Forbes reported that MacMillan’s four daughters had emerged as new billionaires, joining six other Cargill descendants who were already billionaires.

In 2015, the “secretive” Cargill family had a total of 14 billionaires, which at the time was more than any other family in the world.

In July, Cargill reported a 41% slump in its adjusted quarterly profit for Q4—$476 million in the quarter ending 31 May—compared with the $809 million it saw in the same time period a year earlier.

The sharp drop was due to a combination of “extreme weather events, the spread of a deadly pig virus, and the fallout from the US-China trade spat.”

In September, soon after Cargill said its earnings had increased 3% (to $908 million) in the first fiscal quarter, the compant dealt with “continued problems arising from springtime flooding,” including rising water levels slowing the company’s barge business and preventing ship loading at its port in New Orleans.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos keeps his spot as No. 1 richest in the U.S for the second year in a row, despite parting with a quarter of his Amazon stake in a record-setting divorce settlement earlier this year.

He clocks in at $114 billion, down from $160 billion a year ago while his ex-wife, Mackenzie Bezos, joins the list for the first time at No. 15, with a $36.1 billion fortune.

Bill Gates came in at No. 2 , the same rank as last year, but the gap between him and Bezos has narrowed dramatically, to just $8 billion as of 6 September, the day the net worths were locked. (Business Insider, Forbes)