A new report on the largest private farmland owners in the United States reveals that Bill and Melinda Gates are at the top of the list, with the billionaire couple from Seattle accumulating 242,000 acres of land.
According to The Land Report, the Microsoft co-founder owns agricultural land in 18 states, with the largest properties being in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres). Gates also has a stake in more than 24,800 acres of transition land outside Phoenix.
A Tri-City Herald report on the 2018 purchase of 14,500 acres of agricultural land in Benton County, Wash. – for an astonishing $ 171 million – is what got The Land Report and editor Eric O’Keefe to delve into Gates’ properties.
The survey indicated that land in the United States is owned by Cascade Investment LLC, Gates’ private investment vehicle. Gates also supports online used car salesman Vroom through Cascade, as well as the Canadian National Railway Company.
A spokesman for Cascade Investment declined to comment in The Land Report on any of the details associated with Gates’ transactions or properties, except to say that Cascade strongly supports sustainable agriculture.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a new non-profit group a year ago focused on providing small farmers in developing countries with the tools and innovations they need to deal with the effects of climate change. Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations, or Gates Ag One for short, is based in the greater metropolitan area of St. Louis and focuses on smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Gates’ interest in sustainability also extends to his investment in Impossible Foods, which makes “meat” from plants.
Gates is currently third on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $ 132 billion.
Forbes pointed out in its report on Gates’ farms that he doesn’t even make it into the Land Report’s Top 100 when it comes to individual landowners. That list is headed by John Malone of Liberty Media, with 2.2 million acres of farms and forests. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is on the list at No. 25, with 420,000 acres, mostly in western Texas, where he is busy launching spaceships for Blue Origin.