Sustainable agriculture champion Bill Gates is America’s largest farmland owner

Bill Gates, co-founder of Billionaire and Microsoft, owns 242,000 acres of farmland, making him America’s largest farmland owner. His investment in agriculture can be linked to his investments in agricultural development from climate change and Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products.

Gates’ 242,000 acres of farmland includes at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and 15 other states, according to a 2014 the Wall Street newspaper Michael Larson’s profile. Larson, who manages the Gates’ personal portfolio and the holdings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Philanthropic Foundation, helped coordinate land purchases in order to diversify the couple’s profitable investments away from technology.

According to Land report.

Now, Gates owns farmland in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Its five largest farms are 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, 25,750 acres in Arizona, 20,588 acres in Nebraska and 14,828 acres in Florida.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiatives include Gates Ag One, which focuses on research to help “smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient and sustainable “. The initiative would also seek to extend its sustainable farming methods to as many areas as possible.

Gates has also invested millions in Impossible Foods, a company whose plant-based meat products are made from soybeans and potato protein but look and taste like sausage and ground beef. The products also contain amounts of iron and protein comparable to their meat counterparts, but are cholesterol-free and gluten-free.

The products are now sold in Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores, in 2,100 Walmarts in the United States, and in 5,000 locations, including restaurants and fast food chains like Little Caesar’s Pizza, White Castle burgers and Burger King.

In 2019, Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, said the company was working on a plant-based steak, telling food technology website The Spoon: “If we can make an amazingly delicious, world-class steak. .. it will be very much only to the beef industry, but to other sectors of the meat industry. “

Given that the industrial beef industry is a $ 3 trillion business, and the impacts of climate change will have on agriculture around the world, the farms in Gates could play a vital but disruptive role in the global future of both.

Newsweek contacted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for comment.