Farming is all of a sudden part of the solution and not just part of the problem, Sherrick adds. For five generations, the Reed Family has owned and operated the logging company Green Diamond Resource Co. Large investors usually work with expert advisors to help them acquire and manage their agricultural holdings. She then joined the AGRA programme (see main story), who put her forward as a model participant. 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). 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. 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. If those properties were grouped together and placed on a list of the world's countries by land area, it would fall within the top 50, higher than both France and Spain. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a . 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. Over the past three years she has trebled her farms output and increased her income 15-fold (see A life transformed). Banda is one of 1.75 million African smallholder farmers, 40 per cent of them women, enrolled in a $180-million five-year programme run by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops delivered daily to your inbox. For now, though, all that smart city talk is more than a little premature. Over the past 17 years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly US$6 billion on agriculture. Bill Gates does not own the majority of U.S. farmland. Many stories focused on Gates longstanding interest in climate change and sustainability and suggested those concerns might be driving the land purchases. Published: 23:06 GMT, 15 January 2021 | Updated: 07:04 GMT, 16 January 2021. An entity with ties to billionaire Bill Gates bought 2,100 acres of potato farmland in northern North Dakota prompting the states top prosecutor to intervene after complaints from local residents. ', 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. Wife is shocked after husband of 15 years asks for permission to have an affair: 'I don't know what to do', My Daily Horoscope: What does March 2nd hold for MY star sign? 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 . (Related:Why is Bill Gates buying up farmland across America?). But a Gates spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the claim that hes bought the majority of the nations farmland is false, pointing to. And thats where the land purchases come in. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). The option does not identify how much land . People are going to pay attention to what Bill is doing, Sherrick says. Most notably, in 2017, the Gates-affiliated Mt. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.". 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.. Deploying high-yield . Gates has invested in Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, two companies producing beef substitutes, including the Impossible Burger. In fact, he reportedly owns more farmland than any other individual in America. The billionaire tech mogul and philanthropist has quietly amassed nearly 270,000 acres of farmland across the country, but thats still a relatively small slice of the nations nearly 900 million total farm acres. This high-tech metropolis could be both a breeding and testing ground for futuristic technologies.. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). North Dakota Farmland Purchase. As early as April 2021, Gates received flak for expressing his reluctance about sharing COVID-19 . Introduction. as well as other partner offers and accept our. That removes a major way for actual farm operators to . 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. We've received your submission. He has very competent investment managers.. He created the pledge in 2010 with his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, and his close friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Since it works as an investment for him, it also includes the benefits of using land as an . This boosted Bandas annual income from $50 to $750 last year. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File ), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. He now owns more farmland than my entire Native American nation But a Gates spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the claim that hes bought the majority of the nations farmland is false, pointing to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report from February that showed there were more than 895 million total acres of farmland in the country last year. According to the Journal, they are even discouraged from using Facebook and other social-media platforms. 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. It aims to help poor farmers, especially in Africa and South Asia, get the tools, technologies, and resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty. If each acre can produce more food, thats good news for farmers. Sales of more than a thousand acres are blue-moon events, OKeefe noted, so this one stood out. The booming population of Africa looms over his foundation's latest global survey. The property is currently worth $130.8 million. STEPHEN 'What sentimental tosh!' A 6,300-acre farm owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates near Columbus could be developed into one of the nation's biggest solar energy sites. Left to die alone like an animal: Parents who left 23-stone disabled daughter to die in her own filth are Holiday home owners in Scotland face new SNP tax hike under plans from front-runner to be new First Scotland should just self-identify as an independent country, one SNP member proposed. The groups founding members are expected to spearhead the rollout of the new standards on their own lands. BlackRock is sometimes confused w/ Blackstone, which owned Invitation Homes. The AGRA project is the most concerted effort yet to fix the problem. Larson makes money, and Mr. Gates gives it away., Larson and his team are famously tight-lipped. The Land Report reference came out in winter 2021, after which controversies circulated about Gates' accumulation of American farmland. It isless than .1% of all US farmland because the ownership is so diverse. The threat of climate change means smallholders must keep adapting if they are to survive and prosper, says Guei. 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. bill gates, BioFuel, biofuels, carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, clean technologies, climate change, Coronavirus pandemic, crops, decarbonized power transmission, desalinate, Energy Storage, environ, farmland, fossil fuels, genetic lunacy, GMOs, greenhouse gas emissions, harvest, plant-based protein, solar energy, synthetic meat, zero-carbon cement. And yet, he can't seem to wrestle free of the internet's villainous conspiracies against him. . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. The financial crisis later in that same decade prompted an explosion of investments into farmland when monetary safe havens became scarce. He owns a huge . With the Washington state acreage and other recent additions to his portfolio, O'Keefe calculated, Gates now owns at least 242,000 acres of American farmland. AGRA has provided advice and expertise for 155 such groups in Ghana alone. 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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. Investors bought a record 18.4% of the homes purchased in the fourth quarter of 2021 three-quarters of which were single-family homes. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. 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. Sign up for notifications from Insider! . Working closely with the World Health . CNN founder Ted Turner owns 2 million acres of land largely in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. One of the Gates' favorite vacation homes is in the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana. 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 . 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. As of 2019, around 40 percent of American farmland is rented to tenants, who then operate on it. A single square mile contains 640 acres. The comments below have not been moderated. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. Malone made his fortune as a media tycoon, building the company Tele-Communications, Inc, or TCI, and acting as its CEO before selling it to AT&T for $50 billion in 1999. 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. We invest in the farms to raise productivity. Here are all the companies owned by Bill Gates in 2022. While he owns a significant amount, it is a relatively small slice of the nations nearly 900 million total farm acres. 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. Bill Gates and conspiracy theories go together like peanut butter and jelly. This parcel apparently makes up the bulk of the billionaire couples farmland holdings. Stan Kroenke: Land area: 1.4 million acres. Gates is also number 49 on a list of individuals, families, and businesses who own farmland in the states. En cliquant sur Accepter tout, vous acceptez que Yahoo et nos partenaires traitent vos informations personnelles et utilisent des technologies telles que les cookies pour afficher des publicits et des contenus personnaliss, et des fins de mesure des publicits et des contenus, dtude des audiences et de dveloppement de produit. That means Bill Gates owns 378 square miles of the United States. But if it ever gets built, it would boost the value of Gates land dramatically. While private companies and corporations are increasing . Farms also have a role in fighting climate change. 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. But even with his big new agricultural holdings, Gates still doesn't rank in the Top 100 of private landowners overall in the U.S. - when considering owners of land of all types, not just agricultural. By the end of this century there will be 4 billion more people on Earth - and 3 billion of these extra souls . Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. The post says . Most of us imagine farmers tilling the soil that has been in their families for generations. Oscar Cainer tells all. Grinning and bearing it? than 85 million single-family homes in the country, and only around 15 million of those are rentals, Of those rentals, less than a third are owned by non-individual investors, according to. Gates and his wife own 269,000 acres of farmland. Ive gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, its not even from that neighborhood, said Goehring. The total portfolio of farmland is worth well over $700 million. Weve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single family homes, BlackRock said in response to one tweet. This process is made more efficient by inoculating the seeds with the bacteria. Dr. Alan Busacca, professor emeritus at Washington State University, told Land Report at the time that the fertile land in the area was used for growing 'apples, cherries, carrots, dryland and irrigated wheat, and row and field crops'. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. CLAIM: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates owns the majority of Americas farmland and the investment firm BlackRock holds the majority of single family houses in the country. Expanding the AGRA scheme was set to be high on the agenda, Jama says. It was the highest priced land sale in the US that year. Most likely, it is just one more asset in Gates vast portfolio, quietly appreciating in value while the billionaire himself remains at arms length. P4P aims to link the smallholder farmers explicitly into the process. According to public records, the billionaires portfolio includes shares in Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, a Coca-Cola bottling company, and the tractor manufacturer Deere & Co., among other non-flashy investments. Bill and Melinda bought this massive mansion in the Coachella Valley for $12.5 million in 1999. Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. 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.'. Slectionnez Grer les paramtres pour grer vos prfrences. Flagship projects in Tanzania and Malawi have each recruited 18,000 farmers, while in Ghana 117,000 have signed up. Gates has been asked about his farmland purchases before. Total acreage for Bill Gates: Well over 270,000 acres. While that is . The entity shares the same address as Campbell Farms. One estimate puts the church's holdings close to 177 million acres, or 277,000 square miles. They bought and later sold an additional 6,000 acres in Georgia, NBC News found. The trust and Headley were given 30 days to respond to the letter. In 2006, African governments pledged to inject 10 per cent of their spending into agriculture, says Ameyaw. 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. Social media users are falsely claiming that Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland. 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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. "Bill Gates, co-founder of . While Gates appears . 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. More surprising, however, was the fact that Bill and Melinda Gates own more private farmland . 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. 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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. 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