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. Forty percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted. AGRA was set up in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The nearby community of Buckeye has grown more than tenfold in the last 20 years. Microsoft founder and billionaire turned philanthropist Bill Gates recently laid to rest the long-time conspiracy theory that he owns some 80% of all U.S. farmland in his 11th appearance in an . In emails, BlackRock spokesman Christopher Beattie told The Associated Press that the firm primarily invests in retail, office buildings, hotels and apartment complexes, rather than single-family homes, but he declined to provide a breakdown. In this excerpt, Young claims that the founder of Microsoft said that 3 billion people need to be eliminated from earth, starting with Africans: "For the purpose of sterilisation and population control, there are too many people on the planet we need to get rid of. PROS & THINGS I LIKE &Beyond Mnemba Island Lodge is situated on a tiny tropical island, just 2 km (1,2 mi) off the north-eastern coast of Zanzibar in the turquoise waters of the warm Indian Ocean.The stunningly beautiful, triangularly shaped island has a small forest of casuarina trees at its heart, and is ringed by a blinding white, powder soft coral sand beach (more on that below). In the words of Bill Gates, 3 billion people need to die. 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. ', 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. BILL Gates' $80billion property empire now hangs in the balance after he and his wife of 27 years announced they are divorcing.Properties up for grabs. Bill Gates is best-known for cofounding Microsoft, but he's also a major US landowner, having bought 275,000 acres of farmland. Flagship projects in Tanzania and Malawi have each recruited 18,000 farmers, while in Ghana 117,000 have signed up. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new division known as Gates Ag One. Farmland in those parts is valuable, commanding prices between $10,000 and $15,000 per acre, far beyond the state average of about $2,000. In 1994 Bill and Melinda Gates are said to have hired Michael Larson to help them diversify their property portfolio. . Renmatix provides an innovative process that is an exciting pathway to pursue., He has not elaborated on his plans yet, but Gates will apparently use plant waste and biomass from his farmland to develop biofuels. Without innovation, we will not solve climate change, Gates said. 2 min read. Rising temperatures could also shrink by up to 80 per cent the areas where beans will grow. Investment guru Michael Larson, who has worked with Gates since 1994, runs the Washington-based Cascade Investment, as well as supervising the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations nearly $50 billion endowment. BlackRock also suggested it was being confused for the similarly-named investment management firm Blackstone, which until recently owned Invitation Homes. One other use for the farmland Gates has acquired is to grow crops for biofuels. CNN founder Ted Turner owns 2 million acres of land largely in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. That means Bill Gates owns 378 square miles of the United States. 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. In six years that number has more than doubled. 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 . Were predicting a decline of 20 to 40 per cent in rainfall across West Africa, says David Sarfo Ameyaw of AGRA. That proposed superhighway would run across a 5-mile stretch of the Belmont property. He hopes plant-based substitutes will allow us to cut down on meat eating while still enjoying the taste of meat.. Slectionnez Grer les paramtres pour grer vos prfrences. OKeefe knew Gates had been acquiring farmland for years, mostly through various Cascade subsidiaries. The group is called Leading Harvest, and the Gates-linked Cottonwood Ag is one of its founding members. Bill Gates is working hard to prove he's a great guy. So why does Bill Gates, and other billionaires like him, keep buying up so much farmland? The comments below have not been moderated. Gates' purchase averaged $12,000 per acre. Gates, in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit last year, said his investment group was behind the purchases, and suggested it was linked to seed and biofuel development. Newhouse raised his concerns about Chinese land ownership as he proposed an amendment in a new agricultural appropriations bill, H.R. Which in turn means less impact on the environment. AGRA has provided advice and expertise for 155 such groups in Ghana alone. One estimate puts the church's holdings close to 177 million acres, or 277,000 square miles. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. His environmental bent also extends to farming. 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. For investors who know what theyre doing, agricultural land offers financial stability in uncertain times. The 65-year-old responded by declaring his . North Dakota Farmland Purchase. This article will go into detail about how much land Bill Gates owns and why he owns so much. 5. With $22 million in . Similar to private equity firms destabilizing the housing market, millionaires and billionaires investing in farmland are also creating their own set of issues, as they are now pricing out young farmers looking to buy land. 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. The company is the largest producer of wool in Australia. Soon they came back with the answer: The Louisiana company was acting on behalf of Cascade Investment LLC, the secretive investment firm that manages most of the huge fortune belonging to Bill Gates. The firm is a shareholder in Dallas-based Invitation Homes, which owns nearly 80,000 single-family rentals nationwide. But many farmers lease at least some of the land they cultivate. This high-tech metropolis could be both a breeding and testing ground for futuristic technologies.. 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. False. But the purchaser of record was a small, obscure company in Louisiana. Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both environmental and business sense. 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. New Scientist went to press before the meeting finished. If the nations largest farmland owner can show that farming can be both sustainable and profitable, that will make a big difference. 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. It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions., According to the North Dakota Corporate or Limited Liability Company Farming Law, there are certain exceptions, such as permitting registered family farms or allowing the use of the land for business purposes., Wrigleys office said it had come to our attention that Red River Trust may have acquired land for farming or ranching in Pembina County on Nov. 4, 2021.. There will be incentives for things like using less water, fewer chemicals, and storing more carbon. By the end of this century there will be 4 billion more people on Earth - and 3 billion of these extra souls . Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. FILE - Bill Gates attends a discussion during the 'Munich Security Conference' in Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb. 18, 2022. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates finally revealed the reasons behind his massive purchase of farmland: seed science and biofuel development. People are going to pay attention to what Bill is doing, Sherrick says. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a . . He said he did so to make the farms "more productive" and "create more jobs," adding that it was his investment team that made the decision. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). 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. People involved in the Gates financial empire stress that the familys philanthropic endeavors are kept separate from their investments and business ventures. 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. What does a technology pioneer want with agriculture? U.S. Census Bureau data shows fewer than 20% of such properties are rentals, and the vast majority of those are owned by individual investors, not institutional investors like BlackRock. Expanding the AGRA scheme was set to be high on the agenda, Jama says. While the Gates' own a lot of farmland, nonfarmers own 283 million acres of farmland throughout the U.S. 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 . Malone's 2.2 million acres are largely located in Maine, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming and include profitable cattle ranches. When Ted Turner bought his Flying D Ranch in Montana in 1989, that was his personal passion, OKeefe says. (According to The Land Report, Gates owns about 27,000 acres of non-agricultural land, in addition to his farm holdings.). Most notably, in 2017, the Gates-affiliated Mt. Last year, Cascade Investment made a second major investment in Arizona by acquiring more than 2,800 acres known as Spurlock Ranch in Buckeye for $25 million, that could be built out to include 8,500 homes. The program could be an economic boon for farmers. The AGRA project is the most concerted effort yet to fix the problem. 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. However, this practice of buying up agricultural land predates Bill Gates and has been a popular investment for the super-rich since at least the early 2000s. 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. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) last week, Gates once again fielded a question pertaining to his AG holdings and stated that he actually only owns 1/4000 of all U.S. farmland, or about 270,000 acres spread across 18 different states. In the future, farmers will be paid for sustainability, says Sherrick, who sits on the groups board. Bill Gates' Mega House - $154 Million. 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. One of the Gates' favorite vacation homes is in the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana. Bill Gates does not own the majority of U.S. farmland. While he owns a significant amount, it is a relatively small slice of the nations nearly 900 million total farm acres. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.". Earlier this year, in May, claims were made that Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates owned the majority of America's farmland. Weve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single family homes, BlackRock said in response to one tweet. Investors bought a record 18.4% of the homes purchased in the fourth quarter of 2021 three-quarters of which were single-family homes, according to real estate firm RedFin. Bill Gates now owns the most farmland of anyone in the United States, according to a recent report from The Land Report . The other major problem AGRA is aiming to solve is lack of infrastructure. So far, only eight of 54 countries have done so.. In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, Gates explained that zero-carbon energy sources like nuclear power are vital in reducing the emissions that warm the atmosphere. For their part, governments must improve water storage and create drought-resistant crops. 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. Bill Gates Foundation's investment portfolio has Berkshire Hathaway Inc, as the largest holding among all his invested companies. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Less rain will be a major factor. 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. This parcel apparently makes up the bulk of the billionaire couples farmland holdings. 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, Gates longstanding interest in climate change. Why does Bill Gates now own more than 240,000 acres across the country? In reality, the idea that Bill Gates was single-handedly reinventing farming or designing cities of tomorrow was almost entirely speculation. Bill Gates, whose house in the Medina area of Seattle is pictured, has built up a diverse property portfolio over the years. From these initial three countries, the programme has expanded to 18. People want to know, Why does Bill Gates want all this land?. In addition, the law places certain limitations on the ability of trusts to own farmland or ranchland, the letter said. The largest parcel, a proposed 24,800-acre development known as Belmont, might someday contain 80,000 homes, along with offices, retail, industrial and logistics facilities. Gates . The agriculture sector is important. Working closely with the World Health . That means Gates, whose net worth is estimated at some $134 billion according to Forbes annual ranking of the richest people in the country, owns less than one percent of the nations total farmland. Hes the largest landowner in the United States. Will Bill Gatess green tech initiatives ever intersect with his growing agricultural empire? 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. 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. Published: 23:06 GMT, 15 January 2021 | Updated: 07:04 GMT, 16 January 2021.