Many stories focused on Gates longstanding interest in climate change and sustainability and suggested those concerns might be driving the land purchases. The company also took to Twitter to reject the false narrative. For their part, governments must improve water storage and create drought-resistant crops. The 65-year-old's largest holdings include 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas,25,750 acres in Arizona, 20,588 acres in Nebraska and16,097 in Washington state. The Prestigious school where Princes William and Harry were educated is EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Prince William's potentially awkward visit to homelessness charity. In that same Reddit AMA from 2021, the one where Gates separated his land investments from his sustainability initiatives, he also mentioned the importance of productive seeds to avoid deforestation as well as the production of biofuels, which relies heavily on corn, in the very same answer. Grinning and bearing it? He warned us about a pandemic, he dedicates . a Reddit user asked. The Emmerson family owns and operates Sierra Pacific Industries, a company that logs usable lumber after forest fires and sells it to lumber retailers. Gates has invested in Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, two companies producing beef substitutes, including the Impossible Burger. 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His portfolio is diversified, in other words. Gates and his wife own 269,000 acres of farmland. The massive land grab by Gates last year gave the tech magnate his first appearance on The Land Report, a magazine that "provides news, information, and . According to the Winter 2020 issue of The Land Report, a quarterly magazine that tracks U.S. land sales, Bill and Melinda Gates now own 242,000 acres of farmland worth "more than $690 million . We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Rising temperatures could also shrink by up to 80 per cent the areas where beans will grow. Not all of these owners are American; in fact, the portion of farmland that is foreign-owned has grown about 60 percent in the last decade, from 22 million acres in 2009 to 35.2 million . Thanks to the dealers, AGRA farmers now use 10 to 50 kilograms of fertiliser per hectare, and though this is just a tenth to a quarter of what farmers use in rich countries, it is still a big improvement. Get the world's best independent media newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Corporate Agriculture Against Global Hunger. The project isnt yet funded. Artificial sweetener erythritol linked to heart attacks and strokes, Mediterranean diet may prevent cognitive issues for people with MS, Strange quantum event happens once every 10 billion chances, Aye-aye and possums top list of mammals we should focus on saving, Polar bears caught feeding on a whale carcass in breathtaking photos, The amazing ways electricity in your body shapes you and your health, How AI chatbots in search engines will completely change the internet, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, many African countries have been losing nutrients from their soils, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. This parcel apparently makes up the bulk of the billionaire couples farmland holdings. . You cant just say, Ive got $30,000 saved up and I want to buy some farmland, Sherrick notes. The new green economy will mean new opportunities for land owners, OKeefe believes. In the words of Bill Gates, 3 billion people need to die. We already buy 80 per cent of our produce from developing countries, but those that bid for the contracts are usually the larger companies and farms, says Ahnna Gudmunds, the schemes advocacy officer. According to mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press, there's absolutely nothing to see here as the Microsoft mogul becomes the largest private owner of U.S. farmland, having acquired as many as 270,000 fertile acres. Newhouse raised his concerns about Chinese land ownership as he proposed an amendment in a new agricultural appropriations bill, H.R. Over the past three years she has trebled her farms output and increased her income 15-fold (see A life transformed). , said his investment group was behind the purchases, and suggested it was linked to seed and biofuel development. 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A 2014 Wall Street Journal profile of Larson, Cascade's chief investment officer, hinted at the beginning of that portfolio, after the piece noted that the firm owns 'at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and other states or an area seven times bigger than Manhattan.'. Gates . We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Bill Gates is the largest owner of land in America and there's a food crisis.. Bill Gates is the largest investor in renewables and there's a oil shortage.. Pelham (@Resist_05) April 18, 2022 The risk is large. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, BillGatesbuys nearly $1B Heineken stake despite not being a big beer drinker, Bill Gates daughter living in $51M NYC home as she welcomes first baby, Elites want to use AI to censor political opponents, Bill Gates claims his private jet habit not part of the climate problem. It is the largest charitable foundation in the world and distributes more aid for global . How much land does he own? Investors generally are nevertheless buying an increasing share of the U.S. housing market. Weve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single family homes, BlackRock, single-family rentals nationwide. Theres a tendency in the media to personalize this, OKeefe says. ', Last year the couple bought an oceanfront home in Del Mar, near San Diego, California, for $43million, The six-bedroom Del Mar home boasts a ten-person jacuzzi and a swimming pool overlooking the ocean, Gates, pictured last June during a concert for COVID-19 relief, purchased the San Diego property just as the pandemic took hold in March, In 2017, Gates reportedly bought a significant stake in 24,800 acres of land outside Phoenix, Arizona, which he planned to turn into a 'smart city' with 200,000 residents. The couple also snapped up an oceanfront home in San Diego County, California, last year, for a record making $43 million. The total portfolio of farmland is worth well over $700 million. In fact, in June of 2022 he secured an additional 2,100 acres of farmland in North Dakota for roughly $13.5 million. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. P4P aims to link the smallholder farmers explicitly into the process. Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this.. Impossible Foods had seen a huge surge in demandfor its Impossible Burger product that year. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of $121billion, according to Forbes, has quietly built up a massive agriculture portfolio. Amazing, if truebut its extremely not. The farmland that Gates owns is located in 19 states. Bill Gates is now the largest private farmland owner in the United States, according to a new report. 5. Late last year, Eric OKeefe was researching a mysterious recent purchase of 14,500 acres of prime Washington state farmland. It has been very fulfilling for me and is my full time job," Gates continued. 4356, that would block any new agricultural purchases by companies that are wholly or partly controlled by the Chinese government and would ban existing Chinese-owned farms in the U.S. from drawing from federal agricultural support programs. The Microsoft co-founder is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the country with some 269,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last years edition ofthe Land Report 100, an annual survey of the nations largest landowners. But the details are murky, and there is no evidence that the billionaires farmland-buying spree is driven by anything more than a desire to have a well-diversified portfolio. Of course, Bill Gates is one of the world's richest billionaires.Wealth-X, a global high net worth intelligence and data company, estimates his net worth to be at least $134.1 billion. Forty percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted. That works out to about $11,790 per acre . He also bought farmland in Washington state in 2018, The farmland was bought by the couple, pictured at Lincoln Center in New York in 2017, mostly through their investment company, Cascade Investments, and is not connected to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also works to help support farming. Farming is all of a sudden part of the solution and not just part of the problem, Sherrick adds. One of the more colorful theories pertains to Gatess strange interest in U.S. agriculture, with rumors that the former Microsoft CEO owns upward of 80 percent of farmland in the United States. The other major problem AGRA is aiming to solve is lack of infrastructure. So why does Bill Gates, and other billionaires like him, keep buying up so much farmland? Bill Gates now owns the most farmland of anyone in the United States, according to a recent report from The Land Report . While Gates appears . And the Belmont property is located along Interstate 10, the regions major east-west artery, making it an excellent location for Amazon-style warehouse complexes. In fact, he reportedly owns more farmland than any other individual in America. Almost 300,000 acres is a lot of land for one family or private individual to own, but it's still just a small part of the estimated 911 million acres of farmland in the US. Last year, her maize output was eight cartloads, while the soybean harvest soared to 37 bags. "Why are you buying up so much farmland, do you think this is a problem with billionaire wealth and how much you can disproportionally acquire?" The first necessity is fertiliser. The 13,573-square-foot home has six bedrooms, 11 bedrooms and more luxury features than you can count. For five generations, the Reed Family has owned and operated the logging company Green Diamond Resource Co. People want to know, Why does Bill Gates want all this land? , But hyper-wealthy people like Gates dont make every decision personally, OKeefe notes. They bought and later sold an additional 6,000 acres in Georgia, NBC News found. Im hoping to lay a concrete floor soon, she says. Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., Waste Management, Inc., Canadian National Railway Company, Caterpillar Inc., Walmart Inc., Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts & more are the companies owned by Bill Gates. Some partners in the Arizona project issued a press release touting plans to build a forward-thinking community that embraces cutting-edge technology. There was talk of high-speed digital networks and autonomous logistics hubs. That was all it took for many in the media to conclude that Gates was personally engineering the city of the future. African smallholders are often isolated, unable to get credit or find buyers for their produce. The agriculture sector is important. Bill Gates does not own the majority of U.S. farmland. Larson sees to it that Gates wealth is sensibly, even conservatively, invested. Working closely with the World Health . With the Washington state acreage and other recent additions to his portfolio, OKeefe calculated, Gates now owns at least 242,000 acres of American farmland. Learn more about fact-checking at AP. In 2006, African governments pledged to inject 10 per cent of their spending into agriculture, says Ameyaw. In 1994 Bill and Melinda Gates are said to have hired Michael Larson to help them diversify their property portfolio. Its soil health programme has set up 9000 dealers within 5 kilometres of farmers to sell them the supplies they need. Red River Trust filed paperwork with the office of the secretary of state of North Dakota on Feb. 15 of this year. One of the consequences of farm operators not actually owning their land is figuring out where farm subsidy money goes; much of it trickles to the actual owner of the land, who may just be treating farmland as a basic real estate investment. This is part of a broader 269,000-acre land portfolio belonging to the couple and associated entities across 19 states, with the largest holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Arizona (25,750 acres). Cost and bad infrastructure have long prevented farmers from fertilising their fields, so many African countries have been losing nutrients from their soils (see map above). The agriculture sector is important, he wrote. AGRAs methods are one way to do so. The six-bed Del Mar home, which boasts a ten-person jacuzzi and swimming pool overlooking the ocean, was bought by the couple in late Marchas the international coronavirus pandemic began to take hold. Introduction. According to the Journal, they are even discouraged from using Facebook and other social-media platforms. Groups of 15 to 25 smallholders are also being encouraged to form collectives. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.". While he owns a significant amount, it is a relatively small slice of the nation's nearly 900 million total farm acres. In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Gates explains why raising beef cattle causes more harmful emissions than other forms of agriculture. Our exposure to Invitation Homes is owning its stock in mutual funds we manage, not buying houses w/ them, BlackRock tweeted. However, while stunting has declined by more than a third in South Asia since 1990, in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of stunted children is still on the rise, up 12 million since 1990 to 56 million. From these initial three countries, the programme has expanded to 18. A primary proponent of this view is the Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS), founded in 2014 to "depolarize the charged debate" around genetically modified (GM) seeds. The Microsoft co-founder is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the country with some 269,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last years edition of the Land Report 100, an annual survey of the nations largest landowners. For now, Gatess ever-expanding farmland ownership is really just rich guy doing rich guy things, and while concerning in a late-stage capitalism sort of way, it isnt as cartoonishly nefarious as some conspiratorial corners of the internet want to believe. Most of us imagine farmers tilling the soil that has been in their families for generations. The Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland in the US, making him the largest private-farmland owner, an analysis by The Land Report found in January. The same logic likely holds for Gates Arizona acquisitions. In January, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would create a nonprofit entity called Gates Ag One that will speed up efforts to provide smallholder farmers in developing countries with access to the affordable tools and innovations they need to sustainably improve crop productivity and adapt to the effects of climate change.. But if it ever gets built, it would boost the value of Gates land dramatically. BlackRock also does not own the majority of the countrys 80 million single-family homes. The trustee of Red River Trust is Peter Headley, who identifies himself on his LinkedIn page as head of agriculture investment management at Investment Management Co. A 2020 article by NFU Mutual Charitable Trust claimed that Headley once headed an entity called Cottonwood, which was described as an ag-investment platform for Bill and Melinda Gates. Some experts have pointed to Gatess well-known sustainability and green tech initiatives as a possible reason, but during an earlier Reddit AMA in 2021, Gates said, my investment group chose to do this. North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring told KFYR that public reaction to the purchase has been largely negative. The . "Bill Gates, co-founder of . This latest outburst is part of constantly growing anger against Gates and his foundation in India. the Land Report published. The Gates Foundation's trust invests in the same companies it serves through its development programs, including Monsanto, BASF, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, and many others. It is unclear why Gates, better known as a self-confessed computing 'nerd', has invested in farmland so heavily, and details of the land are scarce,as revealed in The Land Report. Since 2016, Gates has led Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a venture-capital fund that invests in clean-technology startups. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego, OKeefe wrote: Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America., The Land Report scoop made headlines. Much farmland of 14,500 acres of farmland is worth well over $ 700 million paperwork with office. Is the largest private farmland owner in the United States, according to a recent report from the purchases. Must improve water storage and create drought-resistant crops were educated is EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Prince William potentially. 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