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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 mile
by 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 agoIn 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 agoThat "ranch" has 1,100 oil wells. Something similar happened to the King Ranch. More oil, less beef.
- jetrink 6y agoIndeed. 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 agoI don't think ranches count as farmland -- I mean, ranches aren't farms in any meaningful sense.
- fireattack 6y agoIt's not, but he said "[i]n terms of land ownership".
- prawn 6y agoMeanwhile, there's one cattle station in Australia which is 5,851,000 acres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station Drove through it a few months ago (and another time decades ago). It completely surrounds the township of William Creek, and the main road (well, track) in the area goes through the station for quite some time.
- exclusiv 6y agoTed Turner has like 2M acres[1]. I can't find it, but I had read a story awhile back where he was trying to acquire enough land where he could ride a horse from like the southern border to the northern on only his land. John Malone is #1 I guess, but I thought that Ted Turner approach was pretty badass. Ted Turner also has a herd of 50k bison. "With approximately two million acres of personal and ranch land, Ted Turner is the second largest individual landholder in North America. Turner lands are innovatively managed to unite economic viability with ecological sustainability. Turner ranches operate as working businesses, relying on bison, hunting and fishing, and ecotourism as principal enterprises. In addition, Turner ranches support many progressive environmental projects including water resource and timber management, and the reintroduction of native species to the land." [2] I like that. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-are-the-top-10-land-owners-in-the-us-2017-8#2-ted-turner-2-million-acres-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/who-are-the-top-10-land-owne... [2] https://www.tedturner.com/turner-ranches/ https://www.tedturner.com/turner-ranches/
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoThe article is really interesting. And a decent investigative piece. I recommend a full read. It also confirms what I have always said..most of our food and farmland is controlled by sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, pension funds, unions and institutional investment. In the coming decade, all small farms and family farms will disappear. They will only exist as hobby farms or subsidy collecting token farms.
- kls 6y agoSome of this is by design, food insecurity is one of the largest driver of unrest. Those in the power seats and politicians have a vested interest in taking an active part in the management of agricultural production. I grew up on a small citrus farm, I saw NAFTA and the migrant worker bills ravage the small farmers first hand. The way it was done was unfair and amounted to a transfer of wealth to these entities but with that being said, I know why they did it. They need economies of scale, as well as the ability to offset risk, the easiest way to do that is to conglomerate the land together so that if there is a loss of production in one area output can be raised in another. This is hard to do with a co-op of independent farmers. Starving people are dangerous to stability it really is as simple as that, and that is why you see these entities involved in farmlands.
- jackfoxy 6y agoWhile this is entirely true, real assets don't get any realer than productive farmland. The Fed's super money creation policy of 2020 is resulting in a new landrush (pun intended) of well-funded entities into real assets.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoEconomies of scale is a real thing. There will always be large farms for food security. Food is too important and essential to be handed down to small farmers. Small farms are super-inefficient. Having said that, we can’t do away with small farms and family farms. The only way to save it is with automation and labour cost saving tech so it provides enough to be considered a career like any other. I see it as forming co-ops and co-op hubs. Jellicles Farm is creating Hundred-Acre-Hubs and then co-ops of clusters hubs. I want to focus on small acreage automation. Small robots/cobots swarming in small acreages managed by individual farmers. Labour is 40-60% of cost. And it’s becoming increasingly unreliable and unavailable and expensive for small farmers. Automation is the only way. It will satisfy local food security and niche crops. Commodities will still be grown in large commercial corporate farms as they should be..
- runako 6y agoI enjoy seeing land use comparisons. I think there was one a while ago that showed how much land the US would require to house everyone at Tokyo-level density (not much). Another showed how much land we would need to dedicate to solar panels to power the country (also not much). Also worth noting here that the 240k acres they own wouldn't get them into the top 10 private landowners in the US. Edit: One of the solar maps: https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/ https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-t... Not the residential density map, but fun: https://www.6sqft.com/believe-it-or-not-the-worlds-entire-population-can-fit-inside-new-york-city/ https://www.6sqft.com/believe-it-or-not-the-worlds-entire-po... The residential density maps: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/map-if-the-world-lived-like-new-yorkers-wed-all-fit-in-texas https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/map-if-the-world-li...
- na85 6y ago>Another showed how much land we would need to dedicate to solar panels to power the country (also not much). Indeed. I seem to recall seeing that you could power the entire western hemisphere with just a Texas-sized solar farm.
- Allower 6y agoWhen did Texas become small?
- willis936 6y agoAnd if power demand increases another order of magnitude? I don’t think anyone seriously argues that 100% of power should come from solar; it’s just a demonstration of relative quantities.
- ben_w 6y agoWe’re only four of those away from having to choose between a Dyson swarm or ending growth.
- 6y ago
- somerandomness 6y agoApproximately area of Manhattan
- netrus 6y agoNah, whole area of NYC would be in the right ballpark, but is still less.
- saalweachter 6y agoHmmm, it looks like there are 330 million acres [516,000 square miles] of "prime" farmland in the United States. That puts the Gates at around 0.07% of the US farmland.
- kickout 6y agoCorrect, about 330M acres of farmland. Lol, I wouldn't call all 330M prime. Maybe 180-200M are 'prime'. The North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas acres aren't going to win many 'prime' contests. They can produce a profit, yes. But no always a big one
- jeffbee 6y agoYou sure about those examples? I just pulled up the USDA soil survey of some place I've never been, Edmunds County S.D., and it looks to me like over one third of the county is capability class 2 or better, which is considered "prime farmland" or better.
- mattgrice 6y agoCapability doesn't take into account climate or access to water.
- jeffbee 6y agoI don't believe that is correct. This classification system considers both. To be in class I or II you need either no or "slight climatic limitations". I found another document that says N.D. has 47% of its area as either classes I or II, making it the third-most-arable state after Iowa and Illinois.
- agumonkey 6y agoAnd how many people own as much (or same order of magnitude) as the gates ?
- 6y ago
- adav 6y agoSounds about the size of Greater London.
- chasely 6y agoI was expecting a much larger number. At $10k/acre for good arable land, that's only 2.4e5 * 1e4 = $2.4B, which is still a fair amount of money.
- jevgeni 6y agoThat's about 0.00003% of all U.S. farmland. EDIT: I failed basic arithmetic, apparently. It's 0.03%
- sokoloff 6y agoI think it's about 0.03% of all US farmland, 3 orders of magnitude more. 267K acres out of 897M acres.
- kickout 6y agoNo, there are only 330M acres of US farmland according to the USDA: source in blog post sorry https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-ag...
- sokoloff 6y agoPage 4 in this USDA Ag Stats report says it's 897M acres: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/fnlo0220.pdf https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/report... "Total land in farms, at 897,400,000 acres, decreased 2,100,000 acres from 2018." I've seen the 330M acres figure elsewhere as the "prime" farmland area rather than total farmland and the blog post you cite has figures that include fallow, idle, and pasture farmland categories above the crop usage figure of 330M acres. In any case, cropland is 2.5 orders of magnitude higher than GP's calculation rather than a full 3.
- jevgeni 6y agoThanks!
- amelius 6y agoYou can make a lot more money by owning a lot of small patches of land than by owning one large piece of land. Unless you are actually using the land for farming, of course.
- twox2 6y agoI mean, isn't that close to the size of manhattan?
- ceilingcorner 6y agoMeanwhile the average person owns no land, is behind on their rent, and will probably (if ever) get a mortgage they can never feasibly pay off. Yes, it’s a lot of land and it’s not remotely justifiable. Inequality isn’t something to just handwave away.
- efwfwef 6y agoit's ~971 square km, which would mean a 30km by 30km square of land. It's very large, but yeah indeed not that massive either at the scale of the country.
- kickout 6y ago240K acres is merely a spec. Especially in the Midwest region of the US. There are ~340 million acres of farmland alone in the US
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoThats a little over a 1/4th of the size of Rhode Island.
- gooftop 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. To put that in perspective though.. per Wikipedia, all of Manhattan is 22.7 square miles! *mindblown*
- zuminator 6y agoIndeed, the entire city of NY is only about 303 sq. miles (land area only), on which resides 8.5 million people. Another stat I read said the median US plot size is 10861 sq. feet., so Gates owns very nearly 1 million times the square footage of the average property.
- gok 6y agoIt's a fair point. There are 12 million square miles of arable land on Earth, so the Gates only own about 0.00315% of that, whereas they own around 0.036% of the planet's wealth.
- bpanon 6y agoHow do you measure wealth?
- coldtea 6y agoWell, in Texas I've seen some ranches that are several miles in one dimension (one was called "The eight mile ranch"). So there's that.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoThat's ~8 San Franciscos!
- m3kw9 6y agoMaybe that’s a lot for farm land. Considering you can fit over 450 football fields in a sq mile.
- samatman 6y agoBy way of contrast, the largest single ranch in the US is the WT Waggoner Estate Ranch, with 535,000 acres, contiguous. It's owned by a couple, the wife of whom is a Walton.
- P_B90210 6y agoThere are 900M acres in US worth $2.5T... It's a huuuge market.
- onion2k 6y agoIf he built a city on it then it would be the 15th biggest city in the US by land area. That makes it sound like quite a lot. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...)
- sh1mmer 6y ago378sqmi is roughly 0.01% of the US (3,796,742sqmi) which still seems like a pretty large amount of land.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Forbo 6y agoAs a basis for comparison, the LDS church owns over 670,000 acres of land in Florida alone. https://www.floridatrend.com/article/17957/the-mormon-church--land-lord https://www.floridatrend.com/article/17957/the-mormon-church...
- cmroanirgo 6y agoFun fact: Australia has some crazy big properties that makes Bill look like a slum dweller. This list of 73 properties are all significantly bigger than Bill's little patch of dirt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_i... eg. Anna Creek Station 23,677 km2 (9,142 sq mi; 5,851,000 acres)