Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates owns the most important chunk of personal farmland in the US throughout 18 states, a brand new report has revealed. Bill and Melinda Gates amassed 242,000 acres of land in the US, with the most important holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres), in accordance with The Land report.
Bill Gates additionally owns a stake in greater than 24,800 acres of transitional land exterior of Phoenix. Research indicated that the lands throughout the US is held by Cascade Investment LLC, Gates’ non-public funding car.
“Gates additionally backs on-line used-car vendor Vroom by means of Cascade in addition to the Canadian National Railway Company,” Geek Wire reported.
According to the Tri-City Herald, a 14,500-acre swath of alternative Eastern Washington farmland in the Horse Heaven Hills in Benton County has simply traded fingers for nearly $171 million – a part of Gates’ holdings.
It is unclear why Gates has invested so closely in farmland, however it may very well be linked to local weather change. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a brand new nonprofit group a yr in the past, centered on serving to small-scale farmers in creating nations with the instruments and improvements they’ll must take care of the consequences of local weather change.
Bill Gates is at the moment on the third spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a web value of $132 billion. But even together with his huge new agricultural holdings, Gates nonetheless doesn`t rank in the Top 100 non-public landowners total in the US, contemplating homeowners of land of all sorts.
The record is topped by Liberty Media’s John Malone, with 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes that record at No. 25 with 420,000 acres.
