Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00022298
THE WORLD'S WEALTHIEST
BILL GATES
The Story Behind Bill Gates Owning More Farmland Than Any American Today ... But he’s far from being Farmer Bill, he is a landlord
BILL GATES
The Story Behind Bill Gates Owning More Farmland Than Any American Today ... But he’s far from being Farmer Bill, he is a landlord
Caricatures by https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey
Original article: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/bill-gates-ows-more-farmland-than-any-american-today-7d5c8436b224
Burgess COMMENTARY
I have a love/hate relationship with Bill Gates. He set the stage for a technical revolution that is impressive by any standard. In some ways the technology that he promoted was second rate, but his creativity within the business environment was top tier. The problem is that the business environment is cruel, and cunning is more respected than goodness.The computer operating system that became the foundation for Microsoft was not very good, but the way it was marketed and distributed meant that the product became an indispensible part of the what every business simply had to have. He was not nice ... that is Microsoft ... was not nice when it found digital copies of its copyright software on unlicenced computers.
I worked on the initial post independence economic planning for Namibia in the early days of personal computers (PCs). Almost immediately after independence the University of Namibia was threatened by Microsoft that it must ensure that all its PCs were using officially licensed Microsoft operating systems. Well Yes! This was the Microsoft business model back then and it was reasonable to want 'pirated copies' to reduce corporate revenues and profits ... but the timing and the optics were terrible ... and the threats were draconian.
Shortly after my experience with Microsoft in Namibia I had another run in with the company. I used to be a 'power user' of FoxPro PC database application software. Microsoft bought the company that developed FoxPro, and in the immediate aftermath of this acquisition, I was told by Microsoft that they would be continuing product support for FoxPro. Fast foward just a few months and FoxPro totally disappeared as a stand-alone product. The FoxPro database engine was integrated into the Office suite and any and all FoxPro systems were orphaned.
When Bill Gates became involved in activities outside Microsoft and especially issues related to developing countries, he had wealth but little knowledge. In some ways the Gates Foundation was run a little bit like Microsoft. Some things went quite well ... a lot did not. It didn't really matter, he had the money and money is power. The Foundation has done a lot of good, but whether or not it has done anything like the amount of good that it could have done may well be another thing. We will never know, because there are very weak management metrics, and most of performance data are self-serving rather than being of objective value.
I am no longer close to Microsoft, but I get the impression that the company is now fairly mature and significantly more responsible and perhaps substantially better at technology than it was in its early days ... in fact it may have become my favorite technology company when it comes to corporate performance and behavior. Something of a surprise, maybe for people who have known me for a long time !!!!!!
It would be good to know a lot more about the Gates' investment in agricultural land. This article asks some questions but does not get very deeply into the Gates' strategy about agricultural land investment. I am using this as something of a 'placeholder' because the issue of 'land ownership' and 'land occupancy' is a very important subject and maybe not as well studied as it needs to be. Stay tuned ..........
Peter Burgess
But he’s far from being Farmer Bill, he is a landlord
Written by Napoleon
May 1st 2022
Bill Gates is in the news a lot lately, Elon Musk dragged him on Twitter after he learned that Gates is short selling the Tesla stock valued at $500 million.
Musk took it personally that he made a Bill Gates meme, that fat-shamed the tech billionaire.
His fans just went for the juggernaut of calling out Gates for his climate change agenda when they feel he is using his money to bet against Tesla, a car company trying to lessen carbon emissions.
Billionaires are weird. Well, Elon Musk just bought Twitter for $44 billion, what can I say?
But Bill Gates also had a past that he wishes we stopped talking about, his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeff Epstein, which he called an ‘error in judgment.’
His ex-wife Melinda French Gates called Epstein ‘evil personified.’
But there are a lot of fake news and conspiracy theories surrounding Bill Gates, and let’s talk about one of them.
Does Bill Gates Own the Majority of US Farmland? The Story Behind Bill Gates Owning More Farmlands Than Any American Today Wikimedia
On Snopes, it says it’s ‘False.’
The context being is that Gates owns less than 1% of all farmland in America. It is also not true that Gates is trying to create a food shortage to starve Americans.
The real reason why Gates is heavily invested in farmland is that he makes money from it. The world’s second-richest person wants more money.
He started investing in farmland in 2013 through different LLCs but primarily through Cascade Investments of which its main man Michael Larson was investigated for sexual harassment in 2017 according to a report from The New York Times.
Bill Gates and the company of friends he keeps speak volumes about his character.
Melinda Gates was said to be not happy with the way Bill handled the scandal. Michael Larson remains the man behind the ever-growing fortune of Bill Gates.
When asked during an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit. Bill Gates had this to say —
Reddit But while Bill Gates says that his investment and his quest to find solutions to climate change are two separate issues, you can’t help but wonder why Gates would not divest from his farmland holdings?
Now that the public knows of his vast farmland ownership, people would naturally gravitate towards conspiracy theories, especially since he wasn’t very forthcoming about his farmland investments.
In an NBC exclusive, the farmland that Gates owns grows among other things, potatoes that Mcdonald's use for their French fries, and we all know that Bill Gates wants us to be eating synthetic beef.
I don’t want to call it duplicity but it is starting to look that way.
Final words
- The problem with Bill Gates’s farmland investment is that it hurts local farmers and that Gates isn’t alone.
- Gates and other affluent farmland buyers have been chastised for contributing to land ownership concentration. Fewer people own farmland because they can usually outbid local farmers.
- Bill Gates may offer solutions to save the world, but he can start looking at himself, the decisions he makes hurt real people, who need saving from people like him.
- The conspiracy theories about Bill Gates are false.
- What is true is that if he continues to buy farmland across America, he could become America’s biggest landlord meanwhile, the next generation of would-be farmers faces an uncertain future.
- The controversy over Bill Gates becoming the largest private farmland owner in the US
- McDonald’s french fries, carrots, onions: all of the foods that come from Bill Gates farmland
- Bill and Melinda Gates’ Empire of Dirt