Bill Gates may no longer be the richest man in the world, but he can claim a new title: the king of America’s farmland.
The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft has become the largest owner of farmland in the United States by quietly buying massive plots across the county, according to a new report.
Gates’ portfolio includes about 242,000 acres of farmland and about 27,000 acres of other land in 19 states, according to The Land Report, a magazine for land investors that tracks the country’s largest landowners. .
The largest chunks of Gates’s farms are in Louisiana and Arkansas, where he owns 69,071 acres and 47,927 acres, respectively, according to dam research.
He also reportedly owns approximately 16,000 acres in his home state of Washington, including a 14,500-acre stretch in the Horse Heaven Hills region that was purchased for nearly $ 171 million.
The land is directly and indirectly owned by Cascade Investment, the Seattle-based firm that Gates, the world’s third-richest man with a net worth of $ 132 billion, according to Bloomberg, created to manage his massive fortune. according to The Land. Report.
A suggestion about Gates ’huge farms appeared in a 2014 Wall Street Journal profile of Michael Larson, the money manager who acts as Cascade’s investment director. The piece notes that the company owns “at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and other states, or an area seven times larger than Manhattan.”
It is not known why Gates has invested in so much farmland or how its extensions are currently used. Cascade did not immediately respond to a phone message on Friday and the company declined to comment on The Land Report “apart from saying that Cascade is very supportive of sustainable agriculture,” the medium said.
Agriculture is also a key area of care for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the massive charity run by Gates and his wife. The foundation aims to “support country-led inclusive agricultural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia,” according to its website.
Although Gates is the largest owner of farmland in America, he is far from the largest owner of the nation as a whole. This crown belongs to Liberty Media President John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres, according to The Land Report.
This article was first published on NYPost.com