SAO PAULO, Brazil — Hundreds of landless farmers yesterday overran a ranch once owned by an imprisoned Colombian drug lord, hours before the government sold the confiscated property at a public auction.

Three hundred families of landless farmers seized control of the 319-acre ranch that Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia forfeited in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, a police commander, Paulo Roberto Mendes Rodrigues, said. The Landless Workers Movement said in a statement that its militants occupied the ranch because “we want it expropriated for agrarian reform purposes.”

The group has gained international notoriety for taking over land it deems unproductive to pressure the government to redistribute farmland in a country with one of the world’s most uneven distributions of land. Mr. Rodrigues said he was studying ways to evict the farmers peacefully but refused to give further details.

The ranch and other properties owned by Mr. Ramirez Abadia, now awaiting extradition to America, were confiscated after his arrest in Sao Paulo last year.

At yesterday’s auction, Mr. Ramirez Abadia’s ranch sold for close to $465,000.

His Sao Paulo mansion and a smaller property in the state of Minas Gerais went for $582,700, according to the Web site of the Judicial Electronic Auction, which administered bidding on a judge’s orders. The buyers were not identified.

Last week, a beach house and second home that belonged to Mr. Ramirez Abadia were auctioned for more than $2.2 million.

Mr. Ramirez Abadia is accused of being a leader of Colombia’s powerful Norte del Valle cartel.