In January, The Land Report, which annually publishes the list of the 100 largest landowners in the United States, revealed that Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have one of the largest private farm portfolios in the country, worth over 690 million dollars.
According to The Land Report, the largest landowner in the US is the president of Liberty Media, John Malone, followed by CNN founder Ted Turner. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is in 25th place, while Bill Gates is in 49th place and is climbing.
As it turns out, the third richest man in the world has acquired large tracts of land in Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, California and a dozen other states. In total, he is estimated to own at least 242,000 acres of US land.
Most of the things that Gates does usually feed into conspiracy theories. And in this case, nothing different could happen. Some claim he buys land to do futuristic experiments on city life or to create new foods.
But the reason is probably simpler: It is a good investment, with low volatility, that is not particularly associated with stock markets and can be used to hedge inflation risk.
After all, Bill Gates has spent years diversifying his $ 129 billion fortune through his investment firm Cascade Investments. Michael Larson is in charge of his asset management company as well as the 50 billion euros of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the Wall Street Journal wrote about him in 2014, “Mr. Larson makes the money and Mr. Gates gives it away.”
“Rural land has been an attractive investment for years, as it yields reliable returns for investors and homeowners in the long run, focusing primarily on food, fiber and fuel production for a resource-hungry world,” explains Emily Norton of Savills Real Estate. . “Investors are now showing an appetite for the next model of economic thinking, where we manage the land in such a way that we give it as much, or even more, than we take from it,” he added.
Investors betting on the earth are seeing long-term gains from boosting productivity as global population growth intensifies pressure for more and better quality food.
The result is that investment interest in rural land is skyrocketing. The Farmland Partners (REIT) farmland investment fund, which owns 156,500 acres in 16 US states, has seen its value more than double since November. Gladstone Land, another such REIT, is moving to historic highs.
The farmland in Washington state, where Gates made his last purchase, is valuable, priced at $ 10,000 to $ 15,000 per acre.
“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has an alter ego. “Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America,” wrote The Land Report director Eric O’Keefe. However, Gates himself, when asked about land purchases during a discussion on Reddit, said that it has nothing to do with climate change, but with the science of seeds and the development of biofuels.
“The agricultural sector is important. “With more productive seeds, we can avoid deforestation and help Africa tackle climate change.”
But the final decision came from his investment company. Cascade Investment is also a shareholder in the vegetable meat companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, as well as the agricultural equipment company John Deere.
