His portfolio is diversified, in other words. Since it works as an investment for him, it also includes the benefits of using land as an . That removes a major way for actual farm operators to . The project isnt yet funded. Earlier this week, North Dakota State Attorney General Drew Wrigley wrote a letter to Red River Trust, care of Headley, notifying it that corporations and limited liability companies were prohibited from owning or leasing farmland or ranchland in the state of North Dakota., Wrigley wrote that these entities were also barred from engaging in farming or ranching.. Although the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not directly connected with Cascade or its investments, it also has a farmland initiative: Gates Ag One, established in the Greater St. Louis area, with a mission to help 'smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable. There isn't some grand scheme involved - in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.". The Land Report magazine reported in January that Bill and Melinda Gates have amassed the largest portfolio of private farmland in the U.S. A $171 million purchase of 14,500 acres of prime eastern Washington farmland in 2018 gave the power couple an estimated 242,000 acres of farmland, which is nearly the size of Hong Kong. The portion of land that isn't owned by farmers varies widely regionally; in some areas, almost 80 percent of agricultural land is held by non-operators. AFRICA. The 13,573-square-foot home has six bedrooms, 11 bedrooms and more luxury features than you can count. 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. Hes the largest landowner in the United States. AGRA has provided advice and expertise for 155 such groups in Ghana alone. Although nowhere near 80 percent of U.S. farmland, its still a little more than one-third of the state of Rhode Island, a surprising amount for one person and enough to make Gates the largest landowner in the U.S. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.". He owns a huge . Otherwise, Id have missed out on the information that has transformed my life, she says. While the Gates' own a lot of farmland, nonfarmers own 283 million acres of farmland throughout the U.S. Bill Gates and conspiracy theories go together like peanut butter and jelly. The acquisitions are held directly, as well as through Gates' personal investment entity, Cascade Investments. In 2006, African governments pledged to inject 10 per cent of their spending into agriculture, says Ameyaw. 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. Behind Gates in terms of investment in farmland are the cofounders of the Wonderful Company, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, with 190,000 acres. So while the tech mogul certainly owns a large constellation of farms, its nowhere close to the majority nationwide. Gates Biggest Owner of Farmland in US Now says: "Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, has been revealed as the biggest private owner of farmland in the US, after buying up 242,000 acres in 18 states. 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 . BlackRock also does not own the majority of the countrys 80 million single-family homes. Today, Bill Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland in 19 states. (According to The Land Report, Gates owns about 27,000 acres of non-agricultural land, in addition to his farm holdings.). It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions, Gates wrote, responding to a question in Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on social media platform Reddit in March. 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. Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both environmental and business sense. From these initial three countries, the programme has expanded to 18. ', In 2008, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants designed to boost the yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in Africa as well as 'other parts of the developing world so they can lift themselves and their families out of hunger and poverty.'. According to the Journal, they are even discouraged from using Facebook and other social-media platforms. By the end of this century there will be 4 billion more people on Earth - and 3 billion of these extra souls . Grinning and bearing it? 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. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough. The tech billionaire, 65, owns 242,000 acres of agricultural land in 18 states His largest holdings are in Louisiana, Arkansas, Arizona and Nebraska; Gates owns total of 268,984 acres of land of . Why does Bill Gates now own more than 240,000 acres across the country? The couple also snapped up an oceanfront home in San Diego County, California, last year, for a record making $43 million. With proper techniques, the carbon from decaying plant matter can be kept safely in the soil, rather than entering the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new division known as Gates Ag One. Farms also have a role in fighting climate change. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a . Jumbuck Pastoral Company: 5.75 million hectares. While private companies and corporations are increasing . Bill Gates land purchases look to me more like sensible long-term holds run by experienced asset managers.. Bill and Melinda Gates, pictured at The Elysee Palace in 2017 where they received the award of Commander of the Legion of Honor, are now the biggest owners of farmland in the US, a new report revealed, The tech billionaire has quietly bought up 242,000 acres of farmland in 18 states - and 268,984 of multi-use land in 19 states in total, making him the biggest agricultural landowner in the US, though far short of the biggest overall landowner in the country, In 2018, a 'Louisiana investor', later revealed to be Gates, paid $171 million for a large swath of farmland in the Horse Heaven Hill, making it one of the largest real estate transactions in recent memory, In 2014, Gates reportedly purchased more than 4,500 acres in Suwannee County, Florida, for nearly $28 million. That works out to about $11,790 per acre . The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. As of 2019, around 40 percent of American farmland is rented to tenants, who then operate on it. In 2019, it was reported that Impossible Burger was facing a shortage of soy because it relied on farms that didnt use genetically modified seeds. Couple find note in chimney that reveals their 290,000 house was 100 times cheaper 50 years ago. BlackRock is sometimes confused w/ Blackstone, which owned Invitation Homes. 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. Bill Gates has started laying out his plans for creating a smart city in Phoenix, Arizona, science-news outlet Futurism wrote. Between 2006 and 2015, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation allocated over $424 million to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). . BlackRock also suggested it was being confused for the similarly-named investment management firm Blackstone, which until recently owned Invitation Homes. His environmental bent also extends to farming. But it also means we can devote less of the planets surface to farmland, which is good news for forests and ecosystems. AGRAs methods are one way to do so. In fact, he reportedly owns more farmland than any other individual in America. Kroenke is married to Ann Walkton Kroenke, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. John Malone is the largest private landowner in the United States. He has very competent investment managers.. Gates' purchase averaged $12,000 per acre. The arrangement is simple, The Wall Street Journal wrote in a 2014 profile. This is part of APs effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. People involved in the Gates financial empire stress that the familys philanthropic endeavors are kept separate from their investments and business ventures. Adding to the confusion, Blackstone was once a major investor in BlackRock, but sold off its stake in the 1990s. In total Mr Gates and his wife Melinda own 269,000 acres of land across 19 states, including 69,071 acres in Louisiana and 47,927 acres in Arkansas. 5. In the Reddit AMA, he also said he'll sell what he owns as money goes towards the foundation. Our office needs to confirm how your company uses this land and whether this use meets any of the statutory exceptions, such as the business purpose exception, so that we may close this case and file it in our inactive files, the letter says. Public records cited by AgWeek show that the Gates-linked Red River Trust bought the farmland from the owners of Campbell Farms, a potato farming group that is headquartered in Grafton, North Dakota, which is about 50 miles from the Canadian border. Newhouse raised his concerns about Chinese land ownership as he proposed an amendment in a new agricultural appropriations bill, H.R. And in Africa, there's a particularly prominent initiative driving corporate agriculture's agenda Bill Gates's Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Why Bill Gates Keeps Buying Up So Much Farmland, Particle Accelerator Reveals Beginning of Time, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Renmatix has developed a process that converts plant waste and biomass into sugars that can be converted into biofuels and bio versions of chemicals.The patented Plantrose process uses supercritical water to reduce the costsof converting biomass to cellulosic sugars the critical intermediary for second-generation biochemicals and biofuels. THREE years ago, Lucy Banda and her six children lived in a two-room house made of soil dampened and tamped into a dome, with just one bedroom and a living room. Many believe unhinged conspiracy theorists fuel the trend. The vision is to produce more efficiently, but to be aware that climate change is happening, and that we must use all best practices to allow farmers to adapt, says Guei. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest companies in the S&P 500, with a market value of $522.43 billion. 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. That means Bill Gates owns 378 square miles of the United States. This article appeared in print under the headline Bringing Africas farms back to life, Explore the latest news, articles and features, Island-hopping cougars swim kilometres through icy water off US coast, This new version of quantum theory is even stranger than the original. Gates owns roughly 275,000 acres of farmland in the US, according to the 2022 edition of the Land Report 100, a yearly survey of the biggest landowners in the country. Gates and his wife paid almost $171 million for 14,500 acres of farmland in the Horse Heaven Hills of Benton County, Wash., according to The Land Report. Gates, the billionaire tech mogul and philanthropist whose net worth was pegged by Bloomberg at $113 billion, has quietly amassed nearly 270,000 acres of farmland across the country, according to the Associated Press. 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 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. The moguls holdings include large tracts in Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, California, and about a dozen other states. Pour en savoir plus sur notre utilisation de vos informations, veuillez consulter notre Politique relative la vie prive et notre Politique en matire de cookies. Instead, the LDS will add another 12,000 acres to its already massive land holdings, which include over 600,000 acres in Florida alone2 percent of that state's total land mass. THE FACTS: As Elon Musks bid to purchase Twitter has grabbed headlines in recent days, some prominent voices have taken to social media to claim that some other significant acquisitions by deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have largely flown under the radar. The commitment is a ten-fold increase from the foundation's . So AGRA is putting farmers in touch with everyone from financiers who offer microcredit to agents who buy produce for sale elsewhere. When fully developed the area could be home to 200,000 residents and be similar in size to the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, The Land Report said. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an immediate commitment of up to $100 million for coronavirus relief on Wednesday. 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. In total he owns 268,984 acres of land of all types in 19 states, including a suburb up for development - as a so-called 'smart city' - outside Phoenix, Arizona. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Working closely with the World Health . The . AGRA was set up in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Gates,in an Ask Me Anything sessionon Redditlast year, said his investment group was behind the purchases, and suggested it was linked to seed and biofuel development. 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