Bill Gates Is America’s Biggest Owner of Farmland

Just in case you didn’t know, billionaire businessman Bill Gates is the top private farmland owner in the nation.

According to Forbes, the Microsoft co-founder and his wife, Melinda, have been purchasing tracts of farmland across the country for years, but the exact amount of acreage was unknown. However, an article published in mid-January by The Land Report—a magazine that centers on American land and landowners—reported that the couple owns 242,000 acres of farmland, making them the top private farmland owners in the country.

The tech billionaire’s farmland extends across 18 states, including Florida. His three-largest holdings include 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, and 20,588 acres in Nebraska.

Forbes reported that Gates also holds a stake in land in Phoenix, Arizona to the tune of 25,750 acres. The acreage is transitional land that’s being developed as a new suburb. The property is owned directly by Gates, as well as through his personal holding and investment company, Cascade Investments, based in Washington.

Although Gates’s farmland acquisitions may seem incongruent with the typical moves of a tech tycoon, these holdings aren’t his only venture into agriculture. In 2008 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided more than $300 million in grants to promote high-yield sustainable agriculture among farmers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The foundation has also invested in the development of super crops that are resistant to climate change, and higher-yield dairy cows. In 2020 it announced a non-profit organization to further those efforts, called Gates Ag One.

It’s not totally clear just how Gates’s farmland is being utilized, or whether or not any of it is earmarked for conservation. However, a subsidiary of Cascade Investments—Cottonwood Ag Management—is a member of a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture, called Leading Harvest. That relationship may provide insight into how some of the land is utilized.

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