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Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner

561 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

ryanmercer 6y ago
I'd be happy to just have 10 acres for my wife and I :(
- ch4s3 6y ago
  If you aren't picky about location, you can have that for relatively little money. Less than $100K and sometimes with a salvageable house.
  - ryanmercer 6y ago
    Sure, and where you can get 10 acres and a livable house for 100k or less, you can't find work . My wife and I just spent 178k on just over a half acre + house in November. We don't get residential mail delivery, closest grocery is about 15 miles away, closest gas station abut 6 miles away. Our town is a little over 300 people, with no police, the fire department is volunteer, and if we had to call 911 for a medical emergency an ambulance is probably 15-20 minutes away. All of those sacrifices just to be able to afford a half acre. The appraiser refused to agree to the listing price, so we had to scramble and get cash gifts from family after we'd already made an offer. Two offers before us fell through and we were in a 24-hour bid war with another potential buyer. I make 36k a year and my wife is a public school teacher, we consider ourselves to be doing very good compared to many we know and this is the best we can do. Here is a little less than 20 acres within a half hour of me, just land, no buildings. It is 6.91x my gross annual income. Just about no one makes land loans so I'd need to have 249,000 USD as cold hard cash just for the land, then need another 50-125k to build a house. Then I'd have to drill a well, then install septic, then get it changed from light-industrial to residential. All in I'd need 350-450k dollars to make it work. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7700-N-County-Road-150-E_Pittsboro_IN_46167_M90772-19917 https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7700-N-Cou... Similarly close is this one https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/959-E-County-Road-825-N_Bainbridge_IN_46105_M37686-37462 https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/959-E-Coun... for 400k USD with 10 acres and, admittedly, an absurdly large house. No one is going to give a guy making 36k a 400k loan, and there's no realistic way I, at 35, can realistically save 350-450k cash to buy land and build a house before I'm too old to do a lot of the initial work the land would need for my purposes. I'd love to know why I'm being downvoted too. Is it because I don't earn as much as you so my opinion isn't valid? Is it because I wish I lived in a world where I could afford 0.004132231% of the land that Bill Gates owns?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - AngryData 6y ago
      That is expensive as fuck compared to land around me. I live near a town of 1200, you can easily get cleared land for $1500 or less per acre. Prime land here will be worth more, but mostly because it has a higher value as a prospect for non-farming expansion and housing.
      - ryanmercer 6y ago
        For me at least, it's not just the idea of cheap land. The soil makeup, rainfall, growing zone, etc. all matter. You can go buy scrubland stupid-cheap for example, but it's not really useful for homesteading. Similarly land that was over farmed can sometimes be had dirt cheap because the soil is basically depleted and is little more than dirt.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  Yeah, ultimately this is the really sad consequence of non-local land ownership. Homeownership has been put out of reach for pretty much any American. Hell, I read here yesterday that 44% of Americans apparently make less than $18k/year. I'd kill for 10 acres. Even 1 acre near any kind of town is currently out of my reach as a lower-paid software engineer.
  - dudul 6y ago
    > Even 1 acre near any kind of town is currently out of my reach as a lower-paid software engineer. I'm sorry but I don't believe that, unless you have some specific personal circumstances such as very high debt or something. If you're ready to go near any kind of town, it is absolutely possible to find 1 acre on a lower-paid SE salary.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      He needs a job in a town where he can find a job. There are many towns where a lower paid SE can afford an acre of land. And the one company that hires any software people at all has 1 opening every 2 decades. They often don't know how to get word to software people who might be interested so you are unlikely to find out about that opening. Some place in the country it exists though.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - dudul 6y ago
        > He needs a job in a town where he can find a job. I'll assume you meant that he needs a house in a town where he can find a job. First, this was not mentioned as a prerequisite in his post, but fair. Second, software engineer is the job that can be done from anywhere, if your priority is to find 1+ acre of land then maybe you can put up with working remotely. And finally, there are still plenty of towns, with jobs where buying 1 acre of land is completely possible.
        6y ago
Khelavaster 6y ago
They own the highest value of farmland of any private individuals--which is leagues different than the most acreage.
ipnon 6y ago
This is how you transfer intergenerational wealth.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Gates is famous for rejecting intergenerational wealth transfer. Well, $10m is definitely wealth to you or me, but not to Bill Gates. https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-children-inherit/ https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-ch...
  - cool_dude85 6y ago
    He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. I suspect that his desire to not give his kids money will work out much the same way - he gives them "only" $10m (of course, enough to live comfortably on for their entire lives) - but also, control of some billion dollar philanthropic fund.
    - Permit 6y ago
      > He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. My understanding is that most of his wealth is held in MSFT stock which has increased in value by over 4x since 2016. So if he had given away 75% of his wealth in 2016, he'd still have the same net worth today.
      - mywittyname 6y ago
        Not to mention that he probably owns a lot of stakes in tech startups, which have, on paper at least, appreciated quite dramatically in recent years. I think Gates is probably to the point where it's functionally impossible for him to give away all of his money. The value of his personal brand and network is such that startups will probably give away decent chunks of their business just to be a part of that network.
war1025 6y ago
I did some quick math, and the 240k acres it says they own comes out to about 378 square miles, which if condensed down to a square would be 20 miles by 20 miles. On the one hand, that's a lot of land. On the other, it's not really anything.
- jetrink 6y ago
  In terms of land ownership, they are outdone by billionaire Stan Kroenke who owns several large ranches in Texas, including Waggoner Ranch, which is over 500,000 acres in size and surrounded by a single fence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch
  - Animats 6y ago
    That "ranch" has 1,100 oil wells. Something similar happened to the King Ranch. More oil, less beef.
    - jetrink 6y ago
      Indeed. I first learned about the megaranches from Edna Ferber's 1952 novel Giant and the transformation is a major theme of the book. (Incidentally, I created an account on some forum while I was reading the book and out of laziness borrowed the name of one of the characters, Jett Rink. I have used that name on the internet ever since.)
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    I don't think ranches count as farmland -- I mean, ranches aren't farms in any meaningful sense.
    - fireattack 6y ago
      It's not, but he said "[i]n terms of land ownership".
  - prawn 6y ago
ur-whale 6y ago
Is dear old Bill some kind of survivalist?
harveywi 6y ago
Now it is much easier for Bill to be outstanding in his field.
- aquilaFiera 6y ago
  Dad?
- ISL 6y ago
  He has many fields from which to choose, but, alas, he can only be outstanding in one.
- frakkingcylons 6y ago
  Booooo
croes 6y ago
The important part is "private owner". Most land is owned by corporations, that's more to worry about.
- nend 6y ago
  The title seems wrong, as the article specifies: "our researchers identified dozens of different entities that own the Gateses’ assets" It doesn't seem to specify how much Bill and Melinda privately own, but it seems like the majority is owned by organizations.
  - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    Irrelevant, but is "Gateses" really the correct way to pluralize the name?
    - sprayk 6y ago
      Yes. Source: last name is single syllable and ends in -es. Also I googled it to make sure I wasn't making things up. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-happens-to-names-when-we-make-them-plural-or-possessive https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-happens-t...
- xxpor 6y ago
  I don't see why. The purpose of a corporation is to provide a hierarchy for organization of collective effort. In order to farm efficiently (i.e. not a small farm that mostly grows for farmer's market sales) in 2021, you can't simply have two adults and a bunch of children running around a farm. If you're going to hire anyone to help, it almost always makes sense to create at least an LLC.
  - kickout 6y ago
    Well, farming in 2021 is stupidly efficient. Not much efficiency to squeeze out really. The productivity/efficiency has been incredible. Take a look at first set of charts: https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-doesnt-have/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-does...
chasebank 6y ago
Ted Turner owns 1.92M acres of land in the US.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Most of it is grazing land and ranch land. Farmland is rich fertile land with water resources and water rights.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    No farm land was rich fertile land at some point but due to non-sustainable agriculture a lot of this land is no longer qualified to be called "rich fertile", maybe it still "fertile" or "somewhat fertile" but that's it.
    - thehappypm 6y ago
      That's a hefty claim. Got a source?
      - pietrovismara 6y ago
        Just duckduckgo land desertification.
        jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        Thanks for mentioning desertification. This is a very important and crucial problem..and one with no easy answers.
        qchris 6y ago
        Maybe not perfect answers, but letting beavers do their thing is somewhat easy and can lead to shockingly large amounts of water being conserved even in regions experiencing desertification[1][2]. The author of the linked article wrote a book about it, which is pretty fascinating, but there's also been studies in places like Colorado that view it as important enough that I believe it's now part of the state plan for water management. [1] https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.15/wildlife-how-beavers-make-the-desert-bloom https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.15/wildlife-how-beavers-make-t... [2] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24/620402681/the-bountiful-benefits-of-bringing-back-the-beavers https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24/620402681/the-bountiful-benef...
nickthemagicman 6y ago
Is land a better place to park wealth than stocks I wonder. As they say "They're not making any more of it".
- xyzelement 6y ago
  I doubt there's a notion of "better" here and I doubt this land represents a meaningful chunk of his wealth. It's more about diversification on one hand and perhaps a good opportunity to buy this land on the other.
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  It is a decent place to park money. Cash has inflation effects. Land is a lot less susceptible to that.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Thats what I was thinking. It's less susceptible to 3% per year inflation. I heard London had a lot of empty places from the rich buying up all the houses just for money parking purposes and not living there.
- binarymax 6y ago
  Depends on the land and property tax assessment. I’ve been mulling buying some land since interest rates are so low now...but it’s hard to see the value of return when you factor in mortgage fees and property taxes.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    You have to run the numbers over 30 years. Over 30 years the rent will increase (as will taxes), but the payments stay the same. Then the payments go to zero and you get a big payoff. If you can't commit to at least 30 years it is probably bad (you can change your mind as conditions change, but 30 years should be the plan) . You want to share-crop for part of the price. It gives you incentive to ensure the farmer is farming the land as opposed to mining it for the nutrients before leaving you with dead land. Because you share some of the risk (and will have to cover it in bad years - there will be bad 5 year stretches so make sure you can budget for this!) you can get a greater return long term.
shadykiller 6y ago
What qualifies a land as farmland ? Is there actual farming going on ? Can I meet Bill Gates in a farmers market selling his produce ?
- bluGill 6y ago
  He is probably leasing it to local farmers. Most farmers only own a portion of their land. I know of a few farmers who inherited land and got the courts to transfer that inheritance to the grandkids , but (living far away) because they didn't want to have more land in the farm even though they have been farming it for years. (this is also a transfer of wealth to the kids, but your accountant will explain in detail why is is bad to own too much land even if you have no kids)
tidepod12 6y ago
Here is another article that isn't just about farmland, but about land ownership in general: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people-own-the-most-land-in-america/40649951/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people... Of note, the Gates don't even appear on this list. At first I thought it's because OP is only talking about farmland, but in the USA Today article the Simplot family apparently owns more than 400k acres for potato farming in Idaho, but doesn't even appear in the OP. I'm not sure what to make of the discrepancy. Also for the sake of comparison, 240k acres is a good amount, but (as another commenter mentioned), it's also not. There are some cattle ranches larger than that. And for an example of non farm/ranch use, Bezos apparently owns over 400,000 acres in West Texas to be used for the Blue Origin launch facilities.
- coliveira 6y ago
  The biggest land owners in the US own forest land, where there is no agriculture (and for good reason). The land is owned as investment and for the possible resource exploitation, like oil extraction or logging, for example.
  - AdamN 6y ago
    Logging is agriculture. This is why the US Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture.
    - coliveira 6y ago
      Logging is considered an extractive industry.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I think this is discussing private ownership versus corporate. EDIT: I'm less sure about this now, might just refer to government versus non government?
- hcnews 6y ago
  Don't a lot of these lists allow people to pay certain amount to be taken off the list and remain anonymous?
jtsylve 6y ago
Does this also mean that they're the largest private recipients of farm subsidies?
- bluGill 6y ago
  Hard to say. Farm subsidies have limits to discourage this. There are a ton of loop holes, and not all crops qualify for subsidies. There is also debate about what even is a subsidy.
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  Farm Subsidies are largely a myth and a misconstruction of "externalities" as subsidies. If you knew how to get the alleged subsidies the media likes to trot out to disparage farmers into the hands of actual farmers while charging a small % as a consulting fee you'd be unimaginably wealthy.
  - mortehu 6y ago
    USDA estimated farmers received $46.5 billion in direct payments in 2020. Where did this money actually go?
    - shiftpgdn 6y ago
      https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833 https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833 The past decade it has been only about 10 billion a year with fixed direct payments largely eliminated in 2014. 2020 will obviously be an exception due to Covid-19. Most of the recent payments are Market Protection Programs to prevent exports from being wrecked by retaliatory tariffs under Trump. https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp That's very much a means-tested program to prevent farmers from being driven into bankruptcy by tariffs on things they've already produced. It's not a magic money fountain.
      - kickout 6y ago
        I'm only upvoting b/c you clearly have navigated USDA ERS website before... (or google skills are lvl 100) That type of info should be a whole lot easier to access and digest than it currently is.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
What's farmland going for these days (dollars per acre)? I know there are large variations depending on the details (productivity, amount of water, etc), but what's the rough amount?
- ryanmercer 6y ago
  That depends entirely on the area, the soil, the water rights etc. Here in Indiana an acre of farmland will average somewhere in the $7000 per acre range for 'average' soil. See this report from Purdue https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200807_KuetheLangemeierMintert_IndianaFarmlandValuesandCashrents.pdf https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/wp-content/uploads/2...
- claudiulodro 6y ago
  It depends on where you're looking. Like housing, prices vary widely all over the country. Quality farm land anywhere on the west coast seems to be out of my budget as far as I can tell (and I've done a lot of research), but in places like Vermont, the midwest, and the south it seems quite affordable.
- ska 6y ago
  USDA 2020 land value summary https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/pn89d6567/js957404w/hq37w9890/land0820.pdf https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...
- kickout 6y ago
  https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-value-tenure/farmland-value/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v... Added: Check out the productivity by switching this to 'Yield per acre' https://observablehq.com/@kickout/usda-nass-map-extra-statistics https://observablehq.com/@kickout/usda-nass-map-extra-statis...
pininja 6y ago
Does anyone know if the data they used for this report is available online? It would be cool to see a breakdown greater than by state (the image shown in the article).
muterad_murilax 6y ago
Who cares? Seriously.
- lolsal 6y ago
  If you think climate change is real, you probably should. A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_. Why do you think that is?
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Combating climate change is my immediate thought as well. Gates is highly dedicated to reversing climate change. My suspicion is that good farmland is also very suitable for green energy production. Plus, he can dictate terms of use for the land, preventing leasees from spraying harmful pesticides and using practices that destroy the productivity of the land. It's possible he could ban beef production from his land, preventing some volume of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
  - haunter 6y ago
    >A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_. Why do you think that is? They have so much money they want to grow everything for their own consumption on the highest quality? If I were Gates rich I'd definitely do that. Don't even have to be that rich tbh So I can give multiple answers, even contradicting ones too
asperous 6y ago
The farm business is brutal. I think the dream of people moving to the country, owning some land, and living off of it comfortably is long gone and never coming back. At least with big money owning the farms and absorbing the risk people can work in the ag industry for a salary without loosing their life savings. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-toughest-industries-for-an-entrepreneur-to-penetrate https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-toughest-industri... [2] https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/ https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Work in the Ag business without losing what savings? The people who drive those $100k tractors are paid just barely over min wage. The migrant workforce in the fields are paid less than minimum wage.
  - legitster 6y ago
    This is a huge mischaracterization. Depending on the season and crop, migrant day workers in our area can pull $25-26 an hour. And there are fewer workers turning up every year to do it, so the cost is going up. One of the issues in our area is how expensive it is to get enough labor for farms, so farmers are switching to easier crops to grow.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Farm labor is paid better than that. Even the illegals are getting more than they could get legally at the local fast food joint. It is really hard to get farm labor, and so they have to up the pay to attract people. The work is hard and the hours are long, but the pay is okay for the amount of skill required. (if you are reading this you can probably make a lot more money in the city)
- kickout 6y ago
  That hasn't been a dream since the....1900s? 1890s maybe? Homesteading saw its hey-day in the second half of the 1800s. Farming is tough. Margins are low due to the nature of commodities. Very few 'go at it alone' farmers out there. Most went under, sold, died, or partnered up in the 1980s when the credit crisis hurt farms.
vidanay 6y ago
Anyone know what happened to the Drummond family? Up until 3-4 years ago, they were ~23 on the Land Report list. Since then, they haven't been on the list at all (top 100). My suspicion is they re-structured and it's either hidden by trusts or it's been split among a half dozen family members and none of them are individually on the list.
- opinion-is-bad 6y ago
  I can’t give you any significant details, but I can confirm that they have sold some of their land since my family bought a bit of it.
  - 3001 6y ago
    is this the same Drummond of David Drummond, ex GOOGLE VP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman)
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Did anyone else read that and wonder, "Okay, so what is so special about the single acre of land in New Mexico?"
- gimmeThaBeet 6y ago
  I was thinking it was something having to do with original Microsoft. That or he owns the Atari burial site with the E.T. Games.
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
It used to be the Church of LDS due to cattle ranching, right?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
afrcnc 6y ago
oh no, 5G trees.... we're doomed
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> Farmland in Eastern Washington and neighboring Oregon is blessed with abundant moisture, cheap electricity, and unrivaled soils. unrivaled? Try the gulf of Naples in Italy, or Eastern Sicily, or Eastern Japan, or a dozen other locations I'm not even aware of. Most of America is too "old" (in terms of Billions of years) to have "unrivaled" soils.
drawkbox 6y ago
The future of farming is most likely vertical farming with controlled conditions or underground. Especially when humans start going to other planets, this will be key. Side note: Mormon church is the biggest land owner in lots of areas including Florida and Utah. [1][2] Also own lots of land in other states where they are top 10 like Montana and Idaho. [3] Ted Turner and the Wilks family are also massive land owners in Montana, Idaho and other areas. [4] Here's the top land owners in all of US as of 2019: [4] FAMILY ACRES John Malone 2.20M Emmerson family 1.96M Ted Turner 1.92M Stan Kroenke 1.38M Reed family 1.33M Irving family 1.25M Brad Kelley 1.15M Singleton family 1.10M King Ranch heirs 0.93M Peter Buck 0.93M John Malone is the largest land owner in the US [5]. Largest land owners are mostly corporate, private individuals and in some states, religions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-mormons/mormon-church-set-to-become-floridas-largest-private-landowner-idUSL2N0IT2AZ20131108 https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-mormons/mormon-c... [3] https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/06/21/who-owns-montana-top-10-landowners/86179936/ https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/06/21/who... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-in-us/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-i... [5] https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/john-malone-everything-need-know-americas-single-largest-land-owner/ https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/john-malone-eve...
- bluGill 6y ago
  Vertical farming doesn't work out in general. Plants tend to be limited by light, so when you go up you shadow horizontal land. There is some efficiency gain because solar panels -> LED can convert light wave lengths, but I don't know if it is enough to overcome the losses in the system plus the cost of the building. Vertical farms are all niches: lettuce is high value, and spoils fast. Thus they can get closer/faster to market by going vertical. They convert electric (coal and natural gas) to light, so they are not very environmentally sound.
  - AngryData 6y ago
    From the numbers ive seen (which could be off), you get like 250 watts per square meter of solar panels, but you need atleast 350-500 watts per square meter of the highest efficiency currently available grow LEDs. And that is assuming you grow them in a building with higher than natural air temperatures because "wasted" wavelengths aren't really wasted because plants need them to elevate leaf temperatures significantly higher than ambient temperatures. So it has heating costs also. Also, the reason they grow lettuce for these tests and not more calorie dense or nutrient packed plants is because lettuce requires little light and little nutrients, most of its weight and volume is just water and air. Growing wheat or potatoes or other primary food crops requires a lot more light and a lot more nutrients than these demonstration crops.
phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
TFA's original title "Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner" seems fine. Did the submitter editorialize the current title of "Bill and Melinda Gates revealed as largest private farmland owners in US" or was there some other reason for changing it?
scandox 6y ago
RICHARD SCOTT, DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH & QUEENSBERRY owns 280,000 acres of the UK. A country 40 times smaller in area than the US.
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  Is it correct that in the UK there is no land tax? That his cost to own that land is effectively 0?
29athrowaway 6y ago
“Buy land, they aren't making it anymore.” – Mark Twain.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Interestingly we have more land now than the previous generation did. (5,237 new square miles of land since 1985) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-coasts-idUSKCN1101TY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-coasts-idUS...
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    Interesting fact, but with world population doubling every 60 years or so, 5000 sq mi won't change things much.
chadash 6y ago
Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world (or arguably Arnault). You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion) more. On paper yes, but that's not a great metric. When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire. If you multiply Musk's shares in Tesla times the current share price, sure you get 180 billion. But if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they'd plummet in value as he was selling them. Without Musk, I'd be surprised if Tesla is worth 20% of its current valuation. To a lesser extent, this is true of Bezos too, although Amazon without him is still a very valuable company. On the other hand, Bill Gates owns 1.6% of Microsoft, which I believe is his biggest holding, followed by Berkshire Hathaway stock. I'd bet he can sell both of those holdings completely without a huge hit to either stock price (but definitely some hit). Same with his farmland and other alternative assets. On top of that, having already sold his Microsoft shares, he's not subject to as much capital gains tax as Bezos or Musk, each of whom pretty much owe 20% of their total net worth the second they want to sell. So on paper, Musk and Bezos are wealthier, but if all of them decided to Scrooge McDuck it and put all their money into a gold filled vault tomorrow, Bill Gates' vault would be the fullest. EDIT: typo above... Originally said that Musk owns 180 bn in Amazon stock :)
- rabidferret 6y ago
  For purchases like the one in the article, you can absolutely purchase with stock in lieu of cash. This happens all the time, and doesn't have nearly the impact on the share price that selling for cash on the exchange does. How much cash you could get in a vault isn't really a useful measure of wealth since cash isn't the only object of value that you can exchange for goods and services (which you even pointed out in your comment by mentioning gold)
  - giantg2 6y ago
    You still have to sell some to cover the real estate transfer taxes since the government doesn't accept stock. With a 1% transfer tax you're still looking at $1.7M. Not too bad though.
  - chadash 6y ago
    Cash, or gold, artwork, whatever... Sure you can purchase with stock. But you can't easily purchase with $180 billion in stock without affecting the stock price.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Ah, the slow creep back to agricultural serfdom, where the rich own the land the serfs own nothing.
MAGZine 6y ago
Bill has been known for getting in on buying vast amounts of resources that underpin society. He's the single largest shareholder Canadian National Railway, who owns most of the rail infrastructure in Canada.
throwaway5752 6y ago
Smart move from a smart, rich man. Lots of global farmland will lose yield do to aquifer depletion, snowcap accumulation changes in western watersheds, heat waves, and storm damage. Food security is a thing of the past. High quality farmland is not an infinite resource and almost totally utilized outside of where it's been replaced with residential development in the Northeast US.
- kickout 6y ago
  Very few farms are irrigated (acreage-wise). Aquifer depletion (if it happens) would only affect a small percentage of farms. Most farms are rainfed ETA: About 90% of farms are non-irrigated
  - throwaway5752 6y ago
    My impression was that the Ogalla aquifer was stressed. Considering potable water consumption is relatively inelastic, what would that mean for agriculture usage if groundwater sources of potable water were depleted?
francisofascii 6y ago
This highlights why low land taxes and wealth inequality can lead to problems. Regarding just land (not other forms of wealth), a rising tide does not lift all boats.
- tryptophan 6y ago
  Agreed. Lack of a land tax is one of the largest policy issues the western world has this day. I find it strange how little discussion there is about it though.
SmokyBourbon 6y ago
"The Gateses’ largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017" Buying land is the opposite of giving away your money like you pledged to do.
koolk3ychain 6y ago
Fuck these people! Regardless of your politics we should not warrant people like this the amount of control they currently have over our capital markets or...the food supply. This is NOT okay.
- dang 6y ago
  Can you please use HN more in the intended spirit, which is curiosity? This comment breaks the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and I noticed that a lot of your comments are expressing indignation at something or other. This is entirely understandable, but it's not what we're shooting for on this site. It's all too easy for it to engulf everything else, so we ask everyone to be conscious of that and stick to the intended purpose when commenting here.
P_B90210 6y ago
If anyone wants to invest like the Gateseseses check out farmtogether.com
corona-research 6y ago
Gates revealed as funding a fake pandemic.
e15ctr0n 6y ago
All the others on the list are actual farmers. * Number 2 on the list, Offutt family, grow potatoes in Minnesota. https://www.rdoffuttfarms.com/ https://www.rdoffuttfarms.com/ * Number 3 on the list, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have many agricultural innovations to their name, the biggest being Cutie oranges. Here is an in-depth article: A Kingdom from Dust | Jan 31, 2018 https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19072078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19072078 * Number 4 on the list, Fanjul family, are Cuban brothers who own sugar plantations and the Domino Sugar company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers * Number 5 on the list, Boswell family, pioneered cotton farming in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell
johnohara 6y ago
The BMG Foundation seems to have very specific requirements for land purchases that are more than just "good farm land." Aside from the land in Benton County, and it's arability, they paid close attention to available water, access to interstate transportation including road (I-82, I-84), rail (BNSF) and air (Tri-Cities Airport), and reasonable proximity to major metropolitan areas (Seattle, Portland, Boise). No doubt stable gas and electric are nearby along with high-speed fiber (next to the BNSF rail). It's a mistake to think of Bill Gates as the next Mr. Douglas too [0]. His acquisitions are consistent with a mind towards building "smart cities" like the one proposed west of Phoenix. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres
joejohnson 6y ago
This must be an error because Bill Gates said he was going to give all of his wealth away.
neurocline 6y ago
Per US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. 2.2 billion acres of land in the US. 900 million of that is marked as "farmland". 400 million of that is marked as "cropland", and 300 million of that is "harvested cropland". There's also 400 million acres of "pastureland", and 75 million acres of "woodland". I couldn't tell what kind of land Bill Gates owns. It does matter, but not all that much, because however you slice it, it's a pretty small amount of the total.
frogpelt 6y ago
Ted Turner owns around 2 million acres and about 50,000 head of buffalo. So, Bill's got some catching up to do.
sh1mmer 6y ago
If they care about global warming there is tremendous potential for carbon sequestration in agriculture they could push. Obvious examples would be: no-till practices that keep soil carbon sequestered, forest farming methods that mix woodlands into agricultural land improving soil and vegetation carbon retention, capturing agricultural waste carbon in biochar, and reducing wide area cattle grazing methods which adversely effect soil carbon in prairie lands by preventing deep grass root structures.
nickpinkston 6y ago
Interestingly, this was "Big Short" Michael Burry's recent strategy as well [1]: "Why This Legendary Investor Doubled Down On Farmland" [1] https://farmfolio.net/articles/farmland-invetor-mike-burry/ https://farmfolio.net/articles/farmland-invetor-mike-burry/
Erwin 6y ago
Similarly, the largest land owner in Scotland (and UK) is... the Danish clothing magnate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Holch_Povlsen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Holch_Povlsen ( the richest Dane, #254 on Bloomberg's list ahead of e.g. LEGO family whose wealth is split).
bobbyskull 6y ago
For two people, or their foundation? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns a ton of land as well. Likely far more. https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/2/18928879/lds-church-real-estate-holdings-include-farms-ranches-buildings https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/2/18928879/lds-church-real-es...
mastrsushi 6y ago
God, Melinda's hot
known 6y ago
And 45% of America is uninhabited
Ericson2314 6y ago
Hopefully this will help convince people that, yes, land is still important, and yes, we still need a land value tax!

561 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

ryanmercer 6y ago

I'd be happy to just have 10 acres for my wife and I :(

ch4s3 6y ago
If you aren't picky about location, you can have that for relatively little money. Less than $100K and sometimes with a salvageable house.
- ryanmercer 6y ago
  Sure, and where you can get 10 acres and a livable house for 100k or less, you can't find work . My wife and I just spent 178k on just over a half acre + house in November. We don't get residential mail delivery, closest grocery is about 15 miles away, closest gas station abut 6 miles away. Our town is a little over 300 people, with no police, the fire department is volunteer, and if we had to call 911 for a medical emergency an ambulance is probably 15-20 minutes away. All of those sacrifices just to be able to afford a half acre. The appraiser refused to agree to the listing price, so we had to scramble and get cash gifts from family after we'd already made an offer. Two offers before us fell through and we were in a 24-hour bid war with another potential buyer. I make 36k a year and my wife is a public school teacher, we consider ourselves to be doing very good compared to many we know and this is the best we can do. Here is a little less than 20 acres within a half hour of me, just land, no buildings. It is 6.91x my gross annual income. Just about no one makes land loans so I'd need to have 249,000 USD as cold hard cash just for the land, then need another 50-125k to build a house. Then I'd have to drill a well, then install septic, then get it changed from light-industrial to residential. All in I'd need 350-450k dollars to make it work. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7700-N-County-Road-150-E_Pittsboro_IN_46167_M90772-19917 https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7700-N-Cou... Similarly close is this one https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/959-E-County-Road-825-N_Bainbridge_IN_46105_M37686-37462 https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/959-E-Coun... for 400k USD with 10 acres and, admittedly, an absurdly large house. No one is going to give a guy making 36k a 400k loan, and there's no realistic way I, at 35, can realistically save 350-450k cash to buy land and build a house before I'm too old to do a lot of the initial work the land would need for my purposes. I'd love to know why I'm being downvoted too. Is it because I don't earn as much as you so my opinion isn't valid? Is it because I wish I lived in a world where I could afford 0.004132231% of the land that Bill Gates owns?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - AngryData 6y ago
    That is expensive as fuck compared to land around me. I live near a town of 1200, you can easily get cleared land for $1500 or less per acre. Prime land here will be worth more, but mostly because it has a higher value as a prospect for non-farming expansion and housing.
    - ryanmercer 6y ago
      For me at least, it's not just the idea of cheap land. The soil makeup, rainfall, growing zone, etc. all matter. You can go buy scrubland stupid-cheap for example, but it's not really useful for homesteading. Similarly land that was over farmed can sometimes be had dirt cheap because the soil is basically depleted and is little more than dirt.
ndiscussion 6y ago
Yeah, ultimately this is the really sad consequence of non-local land ownership. Homeownership has been put out of reach for pretty much any American. Hell, I read here yesterday that 44% of Americans apparently make less than $18k/year. I'd kill for 10 acres. Even 1 acre near any kind of town is currently out of my reach as a lower-paid software engineer.
- dudul 6y ago
  > Even 1 acre near any kind of town is currently out of my reach as a lower-paid software engineer. I'm sorry but I don't believe that, unless you have some specific personal circumstances such as very high debt or something. If you're ready to go near any kind of town, it is absolutely possible to find 1 acre on a lower-paid SE salary.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    He needs a job in a town where he can find a job. There are many towns where a lower paid SE can afford an acre of land. And the one company that hires any software people at all has 1 opening every 2 decades. They often don't know how to get word to software people who might be interested so you are unlikely to find out about that opening. Some place in the country it exists though.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dudul 6y ago
      > He needs a job in a town where he can find a job. I'll assume you meant that he needs a house in a town where he can find a job. First, this was not mentioned as a prerequisite in his post, but fair. Second, software engineer is the job that can be done from anywhere, if your priority is to find 1+ acre of land then maybe you can put up with working remotely. And finally, there are still plenty of towns, with jobs where buying 1 acre of land is completely possible.
      - 6y ago

Khelavaster 6y ago

They own the highest value of farmland of any private individuals--which is leagues different than the most acreage.

ipnon 6y ago

This is how you transfer intergenerational wealth.

closeparen 6y ago
Gates is famous for rejecting intergenerational wealth transfer. Well, $10m is definitely wealth to you or me, but not to Bill Gates. https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-children-inherit/ https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-ch...
- cool_dude85 6y ago
  He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. I suspect that his desire to not give his kids money will work out much the same way - he gives them "only" $10m (of course, enough to live comfortably on for their entire lives) - but also, control of some billion dollar philanthropic fund.
  - Permit 6y ago
    > He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. My understanding is that most of his wealth is held in MSFT stock which has increased in value by over 4x since 2016. So if he had given away 75% of his wealth in 2016, he'd still have the same net worth today.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      Not to mention that he probably owns a lot of stakes in tech startups, which have, on paper at least, appreciated quite dramatically in recent years. I think Gates is probably to the point where it's functionally impossible for him to give away all of his money. The value of his personal brand and network is such that startups will probably give away decent chunks of their business just to be a part of that network.

war1025 6y ago

I did some quick math, and the 240k acres it says they own comes out to about 378 square miles, which if condensed down to a square would be 20 miles by 20 miles. On the one hand, that's a lot of land. On the other, it's not really anything.

jetrink 6y ago
In terms of land ownership, they are outdone by billionaire Stan Kroenke who owns several large ranches in Texas, including Waggoner Ranch, which is over 500,000 acres in size and surrounded by a single fence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch
- Animats 6y ago
  That "ranch" has 1,100 oil wells. Something similar happened to the King Ranch. More oil, less beef.
  - jetrink 6y ago
    Indeed. I first learned about the megaranches from Edna Ferber's 1952 novel Giant and the transformation is a major theme of the book. (Incidentally, I created an account on some forum while I was reading the book and out of laziness borrowed the name of one of the characters, Jett Rink. I have used that name on the internet ever since.)
- thehappypm 6y ago
  I don't think ranches count as farmland -- I mean, ranches aren't farms in any meaningful sense.
  - fireattack 6y ago
    It's not, but he said "[i]n terms of land ownership".
- prawn 6y ago

ur-whale 6y ago

Is dear old Bill some kind of survivalist?

harveywi 6y ago

Now it is much easier for Bill to be outstanding in his field.

aquilaFiera 6y ago
Dad?
ISL 6y ago
He has many fields from which to choose, but, alas, he can only be outstanding in one.
frakkingcylons 6y ago
Booooo

croes 6y ago

The important part is "private owner". Most land is owned by corporations, that's more to worry about.

nend 6y ago
The title seems wrong, as the article specifies: "our researchers identified dozens of different entities that own the Gateses’ assets" It doesn't seem to specify how much Bill and Melinda privately own, but it seems like the majority is owned by organizations.
- xkcd-sucks 6y ago
  Irrelevant, but is "Gateses" really the correct way to pluralize the name?
  - sprayk 6y ago
    Yes. Source: last name is single syllable and ends in -es. Also I googled it to make sure I wasn't making things up. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-happens-to-names-when-we-make-them-plural-or-possessive https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-happens-t...
xxpor 6y ago
I don't see why. The purpose of a corporation is to provide a hierarchy for organization of collective effort. In order to farm efficiently (i.e. not a small farm that mostly grows for farmer's market sales) in 2021, you can't simply have two adults and a bunch of children running around a farm. If you're going to hire anyone to help, it almost always makes sense to create at least an LLC.
- kickout 6y ago
  Well, farming in 2021 is stupidly efficient. Not much efficiency to squeeze out really. The productivity/efficiency has been incredible. Take a look at first set of charts: https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-doesnt-have/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-does...

chasebank 6y ago

Ted Turner owns 1.92M acres of land in the US.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Most of it is grazing land and ranch land. Farmland is rich fertile land with water resources and water rights.
- dathinab 6y ago
  No farm land was rich fertile land at some point but due to non-sustainable agriculture a lot of this land is no longer qualified to be called "rich fertile", maybe it still "fertile" or "somewhat fertile" but that's it.
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    That's a hefty claim. Got a source?
    - pietrovismara 6y ago
      Just duckduckgo land desertification.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        Thanks for mentioning desertification. This is a very important and crucial problem..and one with no easy answers.
        qchris 6y ago
        Maybe not perfect answers, but letting beavers do their thing is somewhat easy and can lead to shockingly large amounts of water being conserved even in regions experiencing desertification[1][2]. The author of the linked article wrote a book about it, which is pretty fascinating, but there's also been studies in places like Colorado that view it as important enough that I believe it's now part of the state plan for water management. [1] https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.15/wildlife-how-beavers-make-the-desert-bloom https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.15/wildlife-how-beavers-make-t... [2] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24/620402681/the-bountiful-benefits-of-bringing-back-the-beavers https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24/620402681/the-bountiful-benef...

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Is land a better place to park wealth than stocks I wonder. As they say "They're not making any more of it".

xyzelement 6y ago
I doubt there's a notion of "better" here and I doubt this land represents a meaningful chunk of his wealth. It's more about diversification on one hand and perhaps a good opportunity to buy this land on the other.
sumtechguy 6y ago
It is a decent place to park money. Cash has inflation effects. Land is a lot less susceptible to that.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Thats what I was thinking. It's less susceptible to 3% per year inflation. I heard London had a lot of empty places from the rich buying up all the houses just for money parking purposes and not living there.
binarymax 6y ago
Depends on the land and property tax assessment. I’ve been mulling buying some land since interest rates are so low now...but it’s hard to see the value of return when you factor in mortgage fees and property taxes.
- bluGill 6y ago
  You have to run the numbers over 30 years. Over 30 years the rent will increase (as will taxes), but the payments stay the same. Then the payments go to zero and you get a big payoff. If you can't commit to at least 30 years it is probably bad (you can change your mind as conditions change, but 30 years should be the plan) . You want to share-crop for part of the price. It gives you incentive to ensure the farmer is farming the land as opposed to mining it for the nutrients before leaving you with dead land. Because you share some of the risk (and will have to cover it in bad years - there will be bad 5 year stretches so make sure you can budget for this!) you can get a greater return long term.

shadykiller 6y ago

What qualifies a land as farmland ? Is there actual farming going on ? Can I meet Bill Gates in a farmers market selling his produce ?

bluGill 6y ago
He is probably leasing it to local farmers. Most farmers only own a portion of their land. I know of a few farmers who inherited land and got the courts to transfer that inheritance to the grandkids , but (living far away) because they didn't want to have more land in the farm even though they have been farming it for years. (this is also a transfer of wealth to the kids, but your accountant will explain in detail why is is bad to own too much land even if you have no kids)

tidepod12 6y ago

Here is another article that isn't just about farmland, but about land ownership in general: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people-own-the-most-land-in-america/40649951/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people... Of note, the Gates don't even appear on this list. At first I thought it's because OP is only talking about farmland, but in the USA Today article the Simplot family apparently owns more than 400k acres for potato farming in Idaho, but doesn't even appear in the OP. I'm not sure what to make of the discrepancy. Also for the sake of comparison, 240k acres is a good amount, but (as another commenter mentioned), it's also not. There are some cattle ranches larger than that. And for an example of non farm/ranch use, Bezos apparently owns over 400,000 acres in West Texas to be used for the Blue Origin launch facilities.

coliveira 6y ago
The biggest land owners in the US own forest land, where there is no agriculture (and for good reason). The land is owned as investment and for the possible resource exploitation, like oil extraction or logging, for example.
- AdamN 6y ago
  Logging is agriculture. This is why the US Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture.
  - coliveira 6y ago
    Logging is considered an extractive industry.
ogre_codes 6y ago
I think this is discussing private ownership versus corporate. EDIT: I'm less sure about this now, might just refer to government versus non government?
hcnews 6y ago
Don't a lot of these lists allow people to pay certain amount to be taken off the list and remain anonymous?

jtsylve 6y ago

Does this also mean that they're the largest private recipients of farm subsidies?

bluGill 6y ago
Hard to say. Farm subsidies have limits to discourage this. There are a ton of loop holes, and not all crops qualify for subsidies. There is also debate about what even is a subsidy.
shiftpgdn 6y ago
Farm Subsidies are largely a myth and a misconstruction of "externalities" as subsidies. If you knew how to get the alleged subsidies the media likes to trot out to disparage farmers into the hands of actual farmers while charging a small % as a consulting fee you'd be unimaginably wealthy.
- mortehu 6y ago
  USDA estimated farmers received $46.5 billion in direct payments in 2020. Where did this money actually go?
  - shiftpgdn 6y ago
    https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833 https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833 The past decade it has been only about 10 billion a year with fixed direct payments largely eliminated in 2014. 2020 will obviously be an exception due to Covid-19. Most of the recent payments are Market Protection Programs to prevent exports from being wrecked by retaliatory tariffs under Trump. https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp That's very much a means-tested program to prevent farmers from being driven into bankruptcy by tariffs on things they've already produced. It's not a magic money fountain.
    - kickout 6y ago
      I'm only upvoting b/c you clearly have navigated USDA ERS website before... (or google skills are lvl 100) That type of info should be a whole lot easier to access and digest than it currently is.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

What's farmland going for these days (dollars per acre)? I know there are large variations depending on the details (productivity, amount of water, etc), but what's the rough amount?

ryanmercer 6y ago
That depends entirely on the area, the soil, the water rights etc. Here in Indiana an acre of farmland will average somewhere in the $7000 per acre range for 'average' soil. See this report from Purdue https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200807_KuetheLangemeierMintert_IndianaFarmlandValuesandCashrents.pdf https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/wp-content/uploads/2...
claudiulodro 6y ago
It depends on where you're looking. Like housing, prices vary widely all over the country. Quality farm land anywhere on the west coast seems to be out of my budget as far as I can tell (and I've done a lot of research), but in places like Vermont, the midwest, and the south it seems quite affordable.
ska 6y ago
USDA 2020 land value summary https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/pn89d6567/js957404w/hq37w9890/land0820.pdf https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...
kickout 6y ago
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-value-tenure/farmland-value/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v... Added: Check out the productivity by switching this to 'Yield per acre' https://observablehq.com/@kickout/usda-nass-map-extra-statistics https://observablehq.com/@kickout/usda-nass-map-extra-statis...

pininja 6y ago

Does anyone know if the data they used for this report is available online? It would be cool to see a breakdown greater than by state (the image shown in the article).

muterad_murilax 6y ago

Who cares? Seriously.

lolsal 6y ago
If you think climate change is real, you probably should. A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_. Why do you think that is?
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Combating climate change is my immediate thought as well. Gates is highly dedicated to reversing climate change. My suspicion is that good farmland is also very suitable for green energy production. Plus, he can dictate terms of use for the land, preventing leasees from spraying harmful pesticides and using practices that destroy the productivity of the land. It's possible he could ban beef production from his land, preventing some volume of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
- haunter 6y ago
  >A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_. Why do you think that is? They have so much money they want to grow everything for their own consumption on the highest quality? If I were Gates rich I'd definitely do that. Don't even have to be that rich tbh So I can give multiple answers, even contradicting ones too

asperous 6y ago

The farm business is brutal. I think the dream of people moving to the country, owning some land, and living off of it comfortably is long gone and never coming back. At least with big money owning the farms and absorbing the risk people can work in the ag industry for a salary without loosing their life savings. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-toughest-industries-for-an-entrepreneur-to-penetrate https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-toughest-industri... [2] https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/ https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-...

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Work in the Ag business without losing what savings? The people who drive those $100k tractors are paid just barely over min wage. The migrant workforce in the fields are paid less than minimum wage.
- legitster 6y ago
  This is a huge mischaracterization. Depending on the season and crop, migrant day workers in our area can pull $25-26 an hour. And there are fewer workers turning up every year to do it, so the cost is going up. One of the issues in our area is how expensive it is to get enough labor for farms, so farmers are switching to easier crops to grow.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Farm labor is paid better than that. Even the illegals are getting more than they could get legally at the local fast food joint. It is really hard to get farm labor, and so they have to up the pay to attract people. The work is hard and the hours are long, but the pay is okay for the amount of skill required. (if you are reading this you can probably make a lot more money in the city)
kickout 6y ago
That hasn't been a dream since the....1900s? 1890s maybe? Homesteading saw its hey-day in the second half of the 1800s. Farming is tough. Margins are low due to the nature of commodities. Very few 'go at it alone' farmers out there. Most went under, sold, died, or partnered up in the 1980s when the credit crisis hurt farms.

vidanay 6y ago

Anyone know what happened to the Drummond family? Up until 3-4 years ago, they were ~23 on the Land Report list. Since then, they haven't been on the list at all (top 100). My suspicion is they re-structured and it's either hidden by trusts or it's been split among a half dozen family members and none of them are individually on the list.

opinion-is-bad 6y ago
I can’t give you any significant details, but I can confirm that they have sold some of their land since my family bought a bit of it.
- 3001 6y ago
  is this the same Drummond of David Drummond, ex GOOGLE VP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman)

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Did anyone else read that and wonder, "Okay, so what is so special about the single acre of land in New Mexico?"

gimmeThaBeet 6y ago
I was thinking it was something having to do with original Microsoft. That or he owns the Atari burial site with the E.T. Games.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

It used to be the Church of LDS due to cattle ranching, right?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

afrcnc 6y ago

oh no, 5G trees.... we're doomed

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

> Farmland in Eastern Washington and neighboring Oregon is blessed with abundant moisture, cheap electricity, and unrivaled soils. unrivaled? Try the gulf of Naples in Italy, or Eastern Sicily, or Eastern Japan, or a dozen other locations I'm not even aware of. Most of America is too "old" (in terms of Billions of years) to have "unrivaled" soils.

drawkbox 6y ago

The future of farming is most likely vertical farming with controlled conditions or underground. Especially when humans start going to other planets, this will be key. Side note: Mormon church is the biggest land owner in lots of areas including Florida and Utah. [1][2] Also own lots of land in other states where they are top 10 like Montana and Idaho. [3] Ted Turner and the Wilks family are also massive land owners in Montana, Idaho and other areas. [4] Here's the top land owners in all of US as of 2019: [4] FAMILY ACRES John Malone 2.20M Emmerson family 1.96M Ted Turner 1.92M Stan Kroenke 1.38M Reed family 1.33M Irving family 1.25M Brad Kelley 1.15M Singleton family 1.10M King Ranch heirs 0.93M Peter Buck 0.93M John Malone is the largest land owner in the US [5]. Largest land owners are mostly corporate, private individuals and in some states, religions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-mormons/mormon-church-set-to-become-floridas-largest-private-landowner-idUSL2N0IT2AZ20131108 https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-mormons/mormon-c... [3] https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/06/21/who-owns-montana-top-10-landowners/86179936/ https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/06/21/who... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-in-us/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-i... [5] https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/john-malone-everything-need-know-americas-single-largest-land-owner/ https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/john-malone-eve...

bluGill 6y ago
Vertical farming doesn't work out in general. Plants tend to be limited by light, so when you go up you shadow horizontal land. There is some efficiency gain because solar panels -> LED can convert light wave lengths, but I don't know if it is enough to overcome the losses in the system plus the cost of the building. Vertical farms are all niches: lettuce is high value, and spoils fast. Thus they can get closer/faster to market by going vertical. They convert electric (coal and natural gas) to light, so they are not very environmentally sound.
- AngryData 6y ago
  From the numbers ive seen (which could be off), you get like 250 watts per square meter of solar panels, but you need atleast 350-500 watts per square meter of the highest efficiency currently available grow LEDs. And that is assuming you grow them in a building with higher than natural air temperatures because "wasted" wavelengths aren't really wasted because plants need them to elevate leaf temperatures significantly higher than ambient temperatures. So it has heating costs also. Also, the reason they grow lettuce for these tests and not more calorie dense or nutrient packed plants is because lettuce requires little light and little nutrients, most of its weight and volume is just water and air. Growing wheat or potatoes or other primary food crops requires a lot more light and a lot more nutrients than these demonstration crops.

phjesusthatguy3 6y ago

TFA's original title "Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner" seems fine. Did the submitter editorialize the current title of "Bill and Melinda Gates revealed as largest private farmland owners in US" or was there some other reason for changing it?

scandox 6y ago

RICHARD SCOTT, DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH & QUEENSBERRY owns 280,000 acres of the UK. A country 40 times smaller in area than the US.

shiftpgdn 6y ago
Is it correct that in the UK there is no land tax? That his cost to own that land is effectively 0?

29athrowaway 6y ago

“Buy land, they aren't making it anymore.” – Mark Twain.

missedthecue 6y ago
Interestingly we have more land now than the previous generation did. (5,237 new square miles of land since 1985) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-coasts-idUSKCN1101TY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-coasts-idUS...
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Interesting fact, but with world population doubling every 60 years or so, 5000 sq mi won't change things much.

chadash 6y ago

Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world (or arguably Arnault). You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion) more. On paper yes, but that's not a great metric. When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire. If you multiply Musk's shares in Tesla times the current share price, sure you get 180 billion. But if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they'd plummet in value as he was selling them. Without Musk, I'd be surprised if Tesla is worth 20% of its current valuation. To a lesser extent, this is true of Bezos too, although Amazon without him is still a very valuable company. On the other hand, Bill Gates owns 1.6% of Microsoft, which I believe is his biggest holding, followed by Berkshire Hathaway stock. I'd bet he can sell both of those holdings completely without a huge hit to either stock price (but definitely some hit). Same with his farmland and other alternative assets. On top of that, having already sold his Microsoft shares, he's not subject to as much capital gains tax as Bezos or Musk, each of whom pretty much owe 20% of their total net worth the second they want to sell. So on paper, Musk and Bezos are wealthier, but if all of them decided to Scrooge McDuck it and put all their money into a gold filled vault tomorrow, Bill Gates' vault would be the fullest. EDIT: typo above... Originally said that Musk owns 180 bn in Amazon stock :)

rabidferret 6y ago
For purchases like the one in the article, you can absolutely purchase with stock in lieu of cash. This happens all the time, and doesn't have nearly the impact on the share price that selling for cash on the exchange does. How much cash you could get in a vault isn't really a useful measure of wealth since cash isn't the only object of value that you can exchange for goods and services (which you even pointed out in your comment by mentioning gold)
- giantg2 6y ago
  You still have to sell some to cover the real estate transfer taxes since the government doesn't accept stock. With a 1% transfer tax you're still looking at $1.7M. Not too bad though.
- chadash 6y ago
  Cash, or gold, artwork, whatever... Sure you can purchase with stock. But you can't easily purchase with $180 billion in stock without affecting the stock price.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Ah, the slow creep back to agricultural serfdom, where the rich own the land the serfs own nothing.

MAGZine 6y ago

Bill has been known for getting in on buying vast amounts of resources that underpin society. He's the single largest shareholder Canadian National Railway, who owns most of the rail infrastructure in Canada.

throwaway5752 6y ago

Smart move from a smart, rich man. Lots of global farmland will lose yield do to aquifer depletion, snowcap accumulation changes in western watersheds, heat waves, and storm damage. Food security is a thing of the past. High quality farmland is not an infinite resource and almost totally utilized outside of where it's been replaced with residential development in the Northeast US.

kickout 6y ago
Very few farms are irrigated (acreage-wise). Aquifer depletion (if it happens) would only affect a small percentage of farms. Most farms are rainfed ETA: About 90% of farms are non-irrigated
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  My impression was that the Ogalla aquifer was stressed. Considering potable water consumption is relatively inelastic, what would that mean for agriculture usage if groundwater sources of potable water were depleted?

francisofascii 6y ago

This highlights why low land taxes and wealth inequality can lead to problems. Regarding just land (not other forms of wealth), a rising tide does not lift all boats.

tryptophan 6y ago
Agreed. Lack of a land tax is one of the largest policy issues the western world has this day. I find it strange how little discussion there is about it though.

SmokyBourbon 6y ago

"The Gateses’ largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017" Buying land is the opposite of giving away your money like you pledged to do.

koolk3ychain 6y ago

Fuck these people! Regardless of your politics we should not warrant people like this the amount of control they currently have over our capital markets or...the food supply. This is NOT okay.

dang 6y ago
Can you please use HN more in the intended spirit, which is curiosity? This comment breaks the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and I noticed that a lot of your comments are expressing indignation at something or other. This is entirely understandable, but it's not what we're shooting for on this site. It's all too easy for it to engulf everything else, so we ask everyone to be conscious of that and stick to the intended purpose when commenting here.

P_B90210 6y ago

If anyone wants to invest like the Gateseseses check out farmtogether.com

corona-research 6y ago

Gates revealed as funding a fake pandemic.

e15ctr0n 6y ago

All the others on the list are actual farmers. * Number 2 on the list, Offutt family, grow potatoes in Minnesota. https://www.rdoffuttfarms.com/ https://www.rdoffuttfarms.com/ * Number 3 on the list, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have many agricultural innovations to their name, the biggest being Cutie oranges. Here is an in-depth article: A Kingdom from Dust | Jan 31, 2018 https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19072078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19072078 * Number 4 on the list, Fanjul family, are Cuban brothers who own sugar plantations and the Domino Sugar company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers * Number 5 on the list, Boswell family, pioneered cotton farming in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell

johnohara 6y ago

The BMG Foundation seems to have very specific requirements for land purchases that are more than just "good farm land." Aside from the land in Benton County, and it's arability, they paid close attention to available water, access to interstate transportation including road (I-82, I-84), rail (BNSF) and air (Tri-Cities Airport), and reasonable proximity to major metropolitan areas (Seattle, Portland, Boise). No doubt stable gas and electric are nearby along with high-speed fiber (next to the BNSF rail). It's a mistake to think of Bill Gates as the next Mr. Douglas too [0]. His acquisitions are consistent with a mind towards building "smart cities" like the one proposed west of Phoenix. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres

joejohnson 6y ago

This must be an error because Bill Gates said he was going to give all of his wealth away.

neurocline 6y ago

Per US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. 2.2 billion acres of land in the US. 900 million of that is marked as "farmland". 400 million of that is marked as "cropland", and 300 million of that is "harvested cropland". There's also 400 million acres of "pastureland", and 75 million acres of "woodland". I couldn't tell what kind of land Bill Gates owns. It does matter, but not all that much, because however you slice it, it's a pretty small amount of the total.

frogpelt 6y ago

Ted Turner owns around 2 million acres and about 50,000 head of buffalo. So, Bill's got some catching up to do.

sh1mmer 6y ago

If they care about global warming there is tremendous potential for carbon sequestration in agriculture they could push. Obvious examples would be: no-till practices that keep soil carbon sequestered, forest farming methods that mix woodlands into agricultural land improving soil and vegetation carbon retention, capturing agricultural waste carbon in biochar, and reducing wide area cattle grazing methods which adversely effect soil carbon in prairie lands by preventing deep grass root structures.

nickpinkston 6y ago

Interestingly, this was "Big Short" Michael Burry's recent strategy as well [1]: "Why This Legendary Investor Doubled Down On Farmland" [1] https://farmfolio.net/articles/farmland-invetor-mike-burry/ https://farmfolio.net/articles/farmland-invetor-mike-burry/

Erwin 6y ago

Similarly, the largest land owner in Scotland (and UK) is... the Danish clothing magnate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Holch_Povlsen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Holch_Povlsen ( the richest Dane, #254 on Bloomberg's list ahead of e.g. LEGO family whose wealth is split).

bobbyskull 6y ago

For two people, or their foundation? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns a ton of land as well. Likely far more. https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/2/18928879/lds-church-real-estate-holdings-include-farms-ranches-buildings https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/2/18928879/lds-church-real-es...

mastrsushi 6y ago

God, Melinda's hot

known 6y ago

And 45% of America is uninhabited

Ericson2314 6y ago

Hopefully this will help convince people that, yes, land is still important, and yes, we still need a land value tax!