Bill Gates becomes top US farmland owner

Bill Gates now owns the most farmland of anyone in the United States, according to a recent report from The Land Report.

The outlet reported this week that Gates, 65, owns 268,984 acres of land combined across 19 states. Of that number, 242,000 acres are of farmland, 25,750 acres are of transitional land and 1,234 acres are of recreational land, according to the report.

States Gates owns land in include Washington, California, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Of those states, Gates owns the most land in Louisiana, where he is proprietor of more than 69,000 acres. The transitional land he owns in Arizona is reportedly being built into a suburb.

The land is reportedly held by Gates’ Cascade Investments, according to The Land Report.

Gates’ Cascade Investments did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

While Gates owns the most farmland, he does not own the most land total in the U.S.: John Malone takes that title, owning 2.2 million acres of land, according to The Land Report’s list of Top 100 landowners.

Gates is worth $121 billion, according to Forbes, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private charity in the world.

The foundation has donated millions of dollars in grants to promote sustainable agriculture in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and launched the non-profit Gates Ag One in 2020 to “speed up efforts to provide smallholder farmers in developing countries, many of whom are women, with access to the affordable tools and innovations they need to sustainably improve crop productivity and adapt to the effects of climate change.”  (People)

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