[Diggers350] A personal project to save the world? Bill Gates is America’s biggest farmer

[Tony Gosling]

Nothing beats land: Bill Gates is America’s 
biggest farmer. A personal project to save the world?

https://tlio.org.uk/a-personal-project-to-save-the-world-nothing-beats-land-bill-gates-is-now-americas-biggest-farmer/
<https://tlio.org.uk/a-personal-project-to-save-the-world-nothing-beats-land-bill-gates-is-now-americas-biggest-farmer/>4 
August 2023 
<https://tlio.org.uk/author/tony/>Tony 
Gosling<https://tlio.org.uk/a-personal-project-to-save-the-world-nothing-beats-land-bill-gates-is-now-americas-biggest-farmer/#respond>Leave 
a comment

A personal project to save the world? Nothing 
beats land: Bill Gates is now Americas biggest farmer

By Harry de Quetteville and Olivia Rutgard April 8, 2021

<https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/nothing-beats-land-bill-gates-is-now-america-s-biggest-farmer-20210408-p57hd0.html>https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/nothing-beats-land-bill-gates-is-now-america-s-biggest-farmer-20210408-p57hd0.html

He is famous for his sensible office garb and 
digitally-amassed fortune, rather than rugged 
overalls and a weathered hand on the plough. But 
the pioneer spirit, it turns out, burns bright in Bill Gates.

Late in life, the sultan of software, emperor of 
intangibles, has discovered what the British 
aristocracy have known for a thousand years: nothing beats land.

There is a certain irony, of course, about Gates, 
65, becoming the USA’s biggest private owner of 
farmland, which American publication the Land 
Report recently declared him to be. Here is the 
epitome of elite coastal America, born in liberal 
Seattle on the Pacific, educated (until he 
dropped out) at Harvard, investing financially 
and emotionally in the rural fly-over states 
between, swapping ones and zeros for soil and sod.

Emacs!

Ready to swap books for gum boots? Bill Gates has 
become the largest squire in the US.Credit: 
<http://www.gatesnotes.com/>www.gatesnotes.com

His taste for the tilth knows few rivals, now 
that he has put together a reported portfolio of 
prime farmland amounting to 269,000 acres 
(108,860 hectares) 6000 more than the farmland 
held by the Queen in the Crown Estate.

There are romantically named holdings on the West 
coast, close to Gates home country up in 
Washington state, places like the Horse Heaven 
Hills, where the prized soil can change hands for 
$US15,000 ($19,700) an acre and even the local 
town is called Richland. But most of his new 
acquired land is elsewhere, spread across 19 
states, with the biggest lots in places the tech 
titan, worth more than $US120 billion, is perhaps 
less familiar with Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona.

They are the fruit of a financial strategy going 
back a quarter of a century to the day, in 1994, 
when Gates decided to diversify his fortune, then 
concentrated in a 45 per cent stake in the 
company with which his name is synonymous: 
Microsoft. The man he brought in to run his 
investments was a bond manager called Michael 
Larson. And it has been under Larsons leadership, 
via a business called Cascade Investment, that 
Gates has gone from coastal techie to landed gentry.

He may not have started wearing red trousers; nor 
is his hallway draped in wet Labradors (though he 
does profess love for his dogs, Oreo and Nilla). 
But the cold hard facts speak for themselves: in 
the first two decades of Larsons stewardship, 
Gates acquired more than 100,000 acres of land across America.

That may have been eye-popping enough. But the 
last few years have made the pace of those 
purchases seem positively pedestrian, with Gates 
splurging on a series of deals that have more 
than doubled his holdings and propelled him ever 
faster up the charts of landowners. Finally, this 
year, according to calculations by the experts at 
Land Report, he was the biggest squire in the US.

It was 2017 when the purchasing really picked up. 
Cascade splashed more than half a billion dollars 
on more than 100,000 acres across nine states. 
The following year, a further $US171 million went 
on buying 14,500 acres in those idyllic Horse 
Heaven Hills, for a total of around $US690 million in just a few months.

That sum may only represent about half a per cent 
of Gatess wealth. And 269,000 acres may only 
represent about a quarter of a per cent of US 
farmland. But it is still a staggering space to 
have bought in so short a time. Which begs the 
question: what does he want with it all?

What does he want with all that land?

The obvious answer is money. Larson, after all, 
was brought in to invest the Gates fortune and 
grow it, just as surely as a farmer is brought in 
to grow crops. Land, particularly rich arable 
land, is in ever growing demand as the globes 
population rises. As the old saying goes, They 
arent making any more of it. The value of UK 
farmland has historically increased at 6 per cent 
per annum, according to Savills. But after the 
turn of the millennium it more than trebled in value.

So when Gates was asked a fortnight ago, in one 
of his periodic Ask Me Anything sessions on the 
online forum Reddit Hey Bill! Why are you buying 
so much farmland? his answer seemed refreshingly 
straightforward. My investment group chose to do 
this, he noted. It is not connected to climate.

All cleared up then. Farmer Bill couldn’t care 
less about hoe and plough, it was all just a smart financial play.

Except, in the very next breath, Gates 
contradicted himself, and suggested that yes, his 
purchases actually were very much to do with the 
environmental concerns that he makes plain in his 
latest book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

The agriculture sector is important, he wrote. 
With more productive seeds we can avoid 
deforestation and help Africa deal with the 
climate difficulty they already face.

Later on in the discussion he added: We have lots 
of water. The problem is that it is expensive to 
desalinate it and move it to where it is needed. 
The cost is prohibitive for agricultural use of 
water. New seeds can reduce water use but some 
areas wont be able to farm as much.

All of which seems to hint at lines of research 
that a benevolent billionaire might want to 
acquire farmland to pursue. In fact, Gates’ 
interest in productive and sustainable ways of 
feeding the planet does not stop with arable.

He has long had a curiosity in producers of 
synthetic meat such as Impossible Foods and 
Beyond Meat, in order to replace the carbon 
intensive business of rearing animals for 
slaughter. Such companies aim to replicate the 
taste and structure of meat either by replacing 
the protein cells of a steak, say, with plant 
cells, or by growing protein cells in a lab, not 
on a cow. From this perspective, the Gates Estate 
makes sense both as investment and personal project to save the world.

He is not, after all, the first billionaire to 
embark on rural empire building for purposes 
which cynics might write off as vanity 
eco-burnishing or fantasy kingdom building.

Ted Turner, the American media mogul who founded 
CNN, has acquired 2 million acres of land (not 
just farmland) on which roam one of Americas last 
herd of buffalo. All very noble, though critics 
cant help pointing out his private ranch was once promised to Native Americans.

If Gates’ motives are to make money and progress, 
though, who can fault him? He certainly doesn’t 
have a problem giving it away. The Bill and 
Melinda Gates Foundation last year set up its own 
agricultural innovation project, Gates Ag One, 
driving innovation to help smallholder farmers in 
developing countries, many of whom are women
 
sustainably improve crop productivity and adapt 
to the effects of climate change.

It is one part of an effort that has driven Gates 
up the charts in another field of endeavour: 
philanthropy. There too, having given away $US35 
billion and counting, he is very much number one.

How much land does he own?

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.

The land holdings are worth more than $US690 
million ($906 million), a fraction of his estimated $US128.1 billion net worth.

Its equivalent to more than 1000 square 
kilometres. The US’s agricultural land covers 896 million acres in total.

The land is owned through a private investment 
company, Cascade Investment, which also owns 
shares in artificial meat company Beyond Meat and tractor company John Deere.

Wider trend

Mr Gates is not alone in buying up large amounts 
of agricultural land. Investment from wealthy 
private individuals and funds surged after the 
financial crisis, driven by the belief that land 
is going to be a lucrative asset class.

He is part of a wider trend towards investment in 
farmland by owners attracted by growing demand 
and productivity gains because of new technology.

Experts say the potential financial benefits of 
restoring degraded land and encouraging 
biodiversity are tempting investors, as 
governments consider carbon taxes and financial 
rewards for boosting nature and tackling climate change.

Some investment funds also have to meet targets 
around carbon neutrality and other climate goals, 
and are buying land in an attempt to achieve this.

Mr Gates has a particular interest in agriculture 
and food, having been outspoken about the need to 
invest in technology to overcome food shortages 
and tackle climate change, and has argued that 
high-income countries should switch entirely to synthetic beef.

His charitable foundation, which is not linked to 
the investment fund, has also funded research 
into technology designed to improve farming productivity.

Why is it controversial?

Critics of Mr Gates argue that he holds too much 
power over food and agriculture, and is 
interested in enriching himself rather than helping the planet.

There are concerns that the purchase of land by 
corporations and billionaires accelerate the 
industrialisation of agriculture, depriving 
smallholders and family farmers of the chance to 
make a living from land that they may have longstanding connections to.

In a piece for the Guardian, academic and 
indigenous American Nick Estes, of the Lower 
Brule Sioux Tribe, argued that it is monopolistic 
and deprives ordinary people of access to land.

The land we all live on should not be the sole 
property of a few. The extensive tax avoidance by 
these titans of industry will always far exceed 
their supposed charitable donations to the public.

The billionaire knows best mentality detracts 
from the deep-seated realities of colonialism and 
white supremacy, and it ignores those who 
actually know best how to use and live with the land, he wrote.



























-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/pipermail/diggers350/attachments/20230804/6b7af9bd/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 342be3cb.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 139978 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/pipermail/diggers350/attachments/20230804/6b7af9bd/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
Weekly politics show page http://www.thisweek.org.uk
Radio stream 11am/pm and live at 5pm UK Fridays http://www.talkradio.org.uk
Also on: NOT The BCfm Politics Show App 
https://apkpure.com/not-the-bcfm-politics-show/com.sweetsmile.bottom_navigation_flutter 


NB please reply with any unsubscribe request in 
the email body, leaving the subject line intact, 
if you do not wish to recieve further emails - thanks
https://www.youtube.com/user/PublicEnquiry/videos

"And I think, in the end, that is the best 
definition of journalism I have heard; to 
challenge authority - all authority - especially 
so when governments and politicians take us to 
war, when they have decided that they will kill 
and others will die. " --Robert Fisk
'Capitalism is institutionalised bribery' TG

Download, donation only, Tony's three watermarked 
books http://www.bilderberg.org - My books https://payhip.com/TonyGosling
Or buy Tony's three ebooks for £10-£15 here 
https://payhip.com/TonyGosling or paperback here 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254963338161

'From South America, where payment must be made 
with subtlety, the Bormann organization has made 
a substantial contribution. It has drawn many of 
the brightest Jewish businessmen into a 
participatory role in the development of many of 
its corporations, and many of these Jews share 
their prosperity most generously with Israel. If 
their proposals are sound, they are even provided 
with a specially dispensed venture capital fund. 
I spoke with one Jewish businessmen in Hartford, 
Connecticut. He had arrived there quite unknown 
several years before our conversation, but with 
Bormann money as his leverage. Today he is more 
than a millionaire, a quiet leader in the 
community with a certain share of his profits 
earmarked as always for his venture capital 
benefactors. This has taken place in many other 
instances across America and demonstrates how 
Bormann’s people operate in the contemporary 
commercial world, in contrast to the fanciful 
nonsense with which Nazis are described in so much “literature.”

So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish 
participation in Bormann companies that when 
Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv 
to stand trial, it produced a shock wave in the 
Jewish and German communities of Buenos Aires. 
Jewish leaders informed the Israeli authorities 
in no uncertain terms that this must never happen 
again because a repetition would permanently 
rupture relations with the Germans of Latin 
America, as well as with the Bormann 
organization, and cut off the flow of Jewish 
money to Israel. It never happened again, and the 
pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of 
these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an 
Argentinian safe haven, protected by the most 
efficient German infrastructure in history as 
well as by all those whose prosperity depends on his well-being.'
<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fspitfirelist.com%2Fbooks%2Fmartin-bormann-nazi-in-exile%2F&h=eAQErj17O>http<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fspitfirelist.com%2Fbooks%2Fmartin-bormann-nazi-in-exile%2F&h=eAQErj17O>://spitfirelist.com/books/martin-bormann-nazi-in-exile/ 


http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149
http://www.thisweek.org.uk
http://www.911forum.org.uk
http://www.bilderberg.org
http://www.tlio.org.uk
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvPbHiqhLtpNWA_cg_1NULw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMn9GM4atN3t7AHJBbHMR0Q
https://www.twitter.com/TonyGosling
https://www.facebook.com/tony.gosling.16

You can donate to support Tony's work here http://www.bilderberg.org/bcfm.htm
TG mobile +44 7786 952037  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/pipermail/diggers350/attachments/20230804/6b7af9bd/attachment-0003.html>