Ali Hasan
Bill Gates who is the 3rd richest person in the world with a net worth of $132 billion has become the largest private land owner in the US (according to Bloomberg billionaire index). He now owns 242,000 acres of farmland alone which is spread across 18 states including Washington and Florida. This analysis was done by The Land Report.
The Gates family’s biggest holdings are as follows:-
- Louisiana (69,071 acres),
- Arkansas (47,927 acres), and
- Nebraska (20,588 acres).
Gates also owns several thousand acres of transitional land. The Arizona Republic reported in 2017 that about 25,000 acres near Phoenix that Cascade Investment bought a “significant stake” in were being transformed into a suburb with space for 80,000 homes; more than 4,000 acres for schools, offices, and stores; and 3,400 acres of open space.
Gates’ farmland ownership isn’t entirely surprising. In 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $300 million over 3 years to support research to help low-income farmers in Asia and Africa adapt to climate change.
The following year, the Gates Foundation announced it would invest $40 million in research to help breed chickens that lay better-quality eggs and cows that produce more milk for farms in South Asia and Africa.
Though Gates is the US’s top farmland owner, according to The Land Report, he’s far from the biggest landowner. The top spot in The Land Report’s list of the 100 largest US landowners in 2019 belonged to John Malone, the billionaire businessman, landowner, and philanthropist, with 2.2 million acres of land.
Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is investing in land on a large scale, landing the 25th spot, mainly in west Texas.
