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1. This week in Ag Data News, Bill Gates as America's largest owner of farmland. But, does he really own that much land? https://asmith.ucdavis.edu/news/bill-gates-doesnt-own-much-farmland
2. Recently, Land Report wrote that Bill Gates owns more US farmland than anyone else with 242,000 acres - equivalent to the area of Fannin County GA. Minnesota's Offutts and California's Resnicks rank second equal on the list. https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/
3. Gates owns farmland throughout the country, but his largest holdings are in Louisiana, including a 26,236-acre Louisiana farm once owned by notorious former Worldcom CEO Bernie Ebbers, who was convicted of numerous financial crimes.
Map from https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/
Map from https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/
4. The USDA classifies just over half of the United States 1.94 billion acres as agricultural land. According to the ag census, total ag land declined from 950m acres in 1997 to 900m acres in 2017. All the decline was in pasture.
Bill Gates owns 0.03% of America's ag land.
Bill Gates owns 0.03% of America's ag land.
5. Bill Gates is not running farm operations on the land he owns (I assume). He rents the land to farmers. Despite concerns about big money investors buying up farmland, the number of rented farmland acres has not changed appreciably in the past 20 years.
6. In 2014, the USDA Economic Research Service conducted a comprehensive survey of farmland ownership, tenure, and transfer. It yielded a treasure trove of data, which I use in the article.
Survey report: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/74672/eib-161.pdf?v=9167
Data viz site: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/data-visualizations/other-visualizations/visualizing-us-farmland-ownership-tenure-and-transition/
Survey report: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/74672/eib-161.pdf?v=9167
Data viz site: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/data-visualizations/other-visualizations/visualizing-us-farmland-ownership-tenure-and-transition/
7. Most rented agricultural land is owned by non-operators, i.e., people or companies that do not farm any land. Only about a third of this land was purchased from a non-relative by direct sale or in an auction, as would be the case for investors such as Bill Gates.
8. Half of the rented farmland owned by non-operators was acquired through gifts or inheritance, and about 15% was purchased from relatives. Just under half of this land is owned by individuals, rather than partnerships or corporations.
9. Investors without a family connection to agriculture do own farmland, and they may be increasing their holdings. Bill Gates certainly has. However, most absentee-owned farmland appears to be held by the family of farmers or ex-farmers. https://asmith.ucdavis.edu/news/bill-gates-doesnt-own-much-farmland
10. I generated the graphs in this article using this R code: https://files.asmith.ucdavis.edu/land.R
11. Go here to receive Ag Data News weekly by email. https://asmith.ucdavis.edu/forms/email_list_signup
