The Great Reset: Why Is Bill Gates Buying So Much American Farmland & What Is He Doing With It?

By Mark Gruber | Sunday, 03 July 2022 02:15 AM
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The Great Reset: Why Is Bill Gates Buying So Much American Farmland & What Is He Doing With It?

Bill Gates has confirmed legal support for the controversial acquisition of thousands of acres of prime North Dakota farmland after the deal drew anger from the state's residents.

The state's Republican Attorney General Drew Wrigley had inquired into the land sale, and on Wednesday composed a letter stating the transaction complied with an archaic anti-corporate farming law.

The Depression-era law prohibits corporations or limited liability companies from owning farmland or ranchland, though it permits individual trusts to own the land if it is leased to farmers, which Gates intends to do.

Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in America after quietly amassing roughly 270,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last year's edition of the Land Report 100, an annual poll of the country's largest landowners.

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Nevertheless, the billionaire's holdings make up only roughly one percent of the almost 900 million total farm acres in the U.S.

The purchase of the land in North Dakota had raised legal questions as well as concerns that ultrarich landowners do not share the state's values.

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Gates' company, Red River Trust, purchased $13.5 million worth of land in two counties from wealthy northeastern North Dakota potato growers Campbell Farms.

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Roughly 2100 acres of land were sold in the deal, AgWeek reported.

In a curious move, the Campbell family in February filed a partnership name certificate with the North Dakota secretary of state naming their farming operation the Red River Trust - the same name as Gates' firm.

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Yet an attorney for Gates' firm wrote to the attorney general´s office that the Campbells registered the name without his knowledge.

The Campbells did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

North Dakota's Agriculture Commissioner, Republican Doug Goehring, previously announced that many people feel they are being used by the ultra-rich who buy land though they do not necessarily share the state's values.

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"I've gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it's not even from that neighborhood," Goehring explained to KFYR-TV. "Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this."

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Corporations are exempted from the ownership ban if the land is necessary "for residential or commercial development; the siting of buildings, plants, facilities, industrial parks, or similar business or industrial purposes of the corporation or limited liability company; or for uses supportive of or ancillary to adjacent non-agricultural land for the benefit of both land parcels," the law states.

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It's not the first test for a statute that was passed in 1932.

A federal judge in 2018 ruled the law constitutional after a conservative farm group claimed that it limits business options for producers and interferes with interstate commerce by barring out-of-state corporations from being involved in North Dakota's farm industry.

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