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. A corporation or LLC found in violation of the law has up to a year to divest itself fromt he land or face a penalty up to $100,000, according to the letter. 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One estimate puts the church's holdings close to 177 million acres, or 277,000 square miles. 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. Weve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single family homes, BlackRock said in response to one tweet. Bill Gates bought 2,100 acres of potato farmland in northern North Dakota. It isless than .1% of all US farmland because the ownership is so diverse. Instead, he mostly acts like a landlord and allows professional farmers to keep doing their thingeven if those practices are ruinous to the environment. Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill. That means Gates, whose net worth is estimated at some $134 billion. STEPHEN 'What sentimental tosh!' Another is the possibility of cost competitive biofuels. , an annual survey of the nations largest landowners. Nous, Yahoo, faisons partie de la famille de marques Yahoo. Kroenke is married to Ann Walkton Kroenke, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this.. 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Slectionnez Grer les paramtres pour grer vos prfrences. has grabbed headlines in recent days, some prominent voices have taken to social media to claim that some other significant acquisitions by deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have largely flown under the radar. As of 2019, around 40 percent of American farmland is rented to tenants, who then operate on it. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops delivered daily to your inbox. Although Gates owns these farms, he isnt changing their practices. It is 30 kilometres from Mwambaso, the village where she lives to the nearest town, Mchingi. THREE years ago, Lucy Banda and her six children lived in a two-room house made of soil dampened and tamped into a dome, with just one bedroom and a living room. 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. 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). ; That makes him the largest landowner in the U.S. Stats show agriculture is a pretty good investment for . For five generations, the Reed Family has owned and operated the logging company Green Diamond Resource Co. 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. Impossible Foods had seen a huge surge in demandfor its Impossible Burger product that year. For now, though, all that smart city talk is more than a little premature. But some of the software pioneers investments do reveal his grander goals. While Gates appears . We hope by 2015 to have reached 20 million smallholders, says Bashir Jama of AGRA, who runs the organisations soil health programme. The farmland acquired by Gates appeared to be earmarked for genetically engineered corn and soy crops the base foods for what will become synthetic ultra-processed products like synthetic meat. In his Reddit AMA last year, one user said, "What do you plan to do with all the farmland you have purchased? Gates' purchase averaged $12,000 per acre. 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. The Gates' portfolio of farmland covers 18 states. The Land Report magazine reported in January that Bill and Melinda Gates have amassed the largest portfolio of private farmland in the U.S. A $171 million purchase of 14,500 acres of prime eastern Washington farmland in 2018 gave the power couple an estimated 242,000 acres of farmland, which is nearly the size of Hong Kong. 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. In the future, farmers will be paid for sustainability, says Sherrick, who sits on the groups board. That works out to about $11,790 per acre . He owns a huge . 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'. 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 . Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both environmental and business sense. Oscar Cainer tells all. Gates has been asked about his farmland purchases before. 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. This was also invaluable. Watch on. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Bill Gates has started laying out his plans for creating a smart city in Phoenix, Arizona, science-news outlet Futurism wrote. Investors generally are nevertheless buying an increasing share of the U.S. housing market. CNN founder Ted Turner owns 2 million acres of land largely in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. Posted by Triple Net Matt July 4, 2022 Posted in commercial real estate Tags: bill gates, commercial broker, commercial real estate, net lease, nnn, STNL. Gates' interest in farmland is still strong. Follow Technocrats.newsfor more news and information related to Bill Gates and other big tech personalities. Theres also a proposal to build a new interstate linking Phoenix to Las Vegas. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. 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 Land Report reference came out in winter 2021, after which controversies circulated about Gates' accumulation of American farmland. 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. In 2014, he reportedly purchased more than 4,500 acres in Suwannee County, Florida, for nearly $28 million. For comparison, the state of Rhode Island covers an area of 1,214 square miles. The outlet reported this week that Gates, 65, owns 268,984 acres of land . Theres a tendency in the media to personalize this, OKeefe says. 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. ", Gates responded at the time, "My investment team bought the farmland. 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. As Slate financial writer Henry Grabar concluded, the proposed town of Belmont is not a city, nor is it smart, nor does the Microsoft founder appear to be involved in any meaningful way.. Earlier this week, North Dakota State Attorney General Drew Wrigley wrote a letter to Red River Trust, care of Headley, notifying it that corporations and limited liability companies were prohibited from owning or leasing farmland or ranchland in the state of North Dakota., Wrigley wrote that these entities were also barred from engaging in farming or ranching.. He created the pledge in 2010 with his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, and his close friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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). Gates is also number 49 on a list of individuals, families, and businesses who own farmland in the states. One of the consequences of farm operators not actually owning their land is figuring out where farm subsidy money goes; much of it trickles to the actual owner of the land, who may just be treating farmland as a basic real estate investment. He hopes plant-based substitutes will allow us to cut down on meat eating while still enjoying the taste of meat.. Corporate Agriculture Against Global Hunger. His portfolio is diversified, in other words. Another notable acquisition was Cascade's $170 million purchase of 14,500 acres of farmland in Washington state from John Hancock Life Insurance in 2018. 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. 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. Bill Gates is buying up the majority of American farmland and BlackRock is buying the majority of single family houses but Im supposed to believe the biggest threat to us is Elon Musk buying Twitter? read one representative tweet thats been liked or shared on the platform more than 250,000 times. 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. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates finally revealed the reasons behind his massive purchase of farmland: seed science and biofuel development. And thats where the land purchases come in. 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. With $22 million in . She then joined the AGRA programme (see main story), who put her forward as a model participant. Bill Gates is best-known for cofounding Microsoft, but he's also a major US landowner, having bought 275,000 acres of farmland. Purchased fromMadeleine Pickens, the former wife of Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the property deal is one of the largest ever recorded in the area,The Wall Street Journalreported. So why does Bill Gates, and other billionaires like him, keep buying up so much farmland? 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. A new report from AGRA says climate change could increase the number of malnourished people in sub-Saharan Africa from 223 million today to 355 million in 2050. (Through a spokesperson, the company declined to comment for this article.). The same logic likely holds for Gates Arizona acquisitions. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.". He warned us about a pandemic, he dedicates . AFRICA. You cant just say, Ive got $30,000 saved up and I want to buy some farmland, Sherrick notes. 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 . The AGRA project is the most concerted effort yet to fix the problem. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). The billionaire is one of the founders of the Giving Pledge, which asks the world's wealthiest people to give away most of their fortunes to charitable causes. Today, the Belmont tract remains mostly empty desert. The 65-year-old's holdings include 16,097 acres in Washington, 20,588 in Nebraska, 25,750 in Arizona . The dealers also supply the seeds for legumes like soybeans and pigeon peas, which make their own fertiliser from nitrogen in the air, via bacteria in their root nodules. And yet, he can't seem to wrestle free of the internet's villainous conspiracies against him. by Harvard Universitys Joint Center for Housing Studies. 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. The title for largest landholdings overall goes to US businessman John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, who owns 2.2million acres. 4356, that would block any new agricultural purchases by companies that are wholly or partly controlled by the Chinese government and would ban existing Chinese-owned farms in the U.S. from drawing from federal agricultural support programs. ', Cascade did not elaborate on the agricultural land purchases other than to say that the company is 'very supportive of sustainable farming. The 13,573-square-foot home has six bedrooms, 11 bedrooms and more luxury features than you can count. 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. Gates reportedly paid nearly $1,041,293 in property taxes in 2017, for this property. Investors bought a record 18.4% of the homes purchased in the fourth quarter of 2021 three-quarters of which were single-family homes. Social media users are falsely claiming that Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland. This high-tech metropolis could be both a breeding and testing ground for futuristic technologies.. 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. Newsweek called him a sustainable agriculture champion., Those stories dovetailed with earlier reports about Gates large land acquisitions in Arizona. The booming population of Africa looms over his foundation's latest global survey. Artificial sweetener erythritol linked to heart attacks and strokes, Mediterranean diet may prevent cognitive issues for people with MS, Strange quantum event happens once every 10 billion chances, Aye-aye and possums top list of mammals we should focus on saving, Polar bears caught feeding on a whale carcass in breathtaking photos, The amazing ways electricity in your body shapes you and your health, How AI chatbots in search engines will completely change the internet, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, many African countries have been losing nutrients from their soils, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. So far, only eight of 54 countries have done so.. But, while Belmont might not be a smart city, it still looks like a smart investment. The land, most of which is non-irrigated, was transferred to Red River Trust on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3 of last year. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. Adding to the confusion, Blackstone was once a major investor in BlackRock, but sold off its stake in the 1990s. Deploying high-yield . We are no longer accepting comments on this article. For now, Gatess ever-expanding farmland ownership is really just rich guy doing rich guy things, and while concerning in a late-stage capitalism sort of way, it isnt as cartoonishly nefarious as some conspiratorial corners of the internet want to believe. The acquisitions are held directly, as well as through Gates' personal investment entity, Cascade Investments. ET First Published: March 10, 2021 at 8: . Forty percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted. Introduction. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. African smallholders are often isolated, unable to get credit or find buyers for their produce. That makes him the largest landowner in the U.S. Stats show agriculture is a pretty good investment for billionaires. Although nowhere near 80 percent of U.S. farmland, its still a little more than one-third of the state of Rhode Island, a surprising amount for one person and enough to make Gates the largest landowner in the U.S. Larson also makes sure Gates keeps his eggs in a wide variety of baskets. He has very competent investment managers.. 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. Grinning and bearing it? Weve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single family homes, BlackRock, single-family rentals nationwide. Gates owns over 242,000 . Social media users have been sharing posts online that list claims about Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. Agriculture champion., Those stories dovetailed with earlier reports about Gates & # x27 ; s global! 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