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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"><font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Othern">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Othern</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Bill Gates is the biggest private owner
of farmland in the United States. Why?</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Nick Estes - April 5, 2021<br>
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<p><span><span>B</span></span><span>ill Gates has never
been a farmer. So why did the Land Report <a
href="https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/"
data-link-name="in body link">dub</a> him “Farmer
Bill” this year? The third richest man on the planet
doesn’t have a green thumb. Nor does he put in the
back-breaking labor humble people do to grow our food
and who get for far less praise for it. That kind of
hard work isn’t what made him rich. Gates’
achievement, according to the report, is that he’s
largest private owner of farmland in the US. A 2018
purchase of 14,500 acres of prime eastern Washington
farmland – which is traditional Yakima territory – for
$171m helped him get that title.</span></p>
<p>In total, Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of
farmland with <a
href="https://www.agriculture.com/farm-management/farm-land/bill-gates-is-about-to-change-the-way-amer-ca-farms"
data-link-name="in body link">assets totaling</a> more
than $690m. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly
the size of Hong Kong and twice the acreage of the Lower
Brule Sioux Tribe, where I’m an enrolled member. A white
man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!</p>
<figure id="ce1a7f6d-0a92-43e2-926d-990a84a8514b"></figure>
<p>The United States is defined by the excesses of its
ruling class. But why do a handful of people own so much
land?</p>
<p>Land is power, land is wealth, and, more importantly,
land is about race and class. The relationship to land –
who owns it, who works it and who cares for it –
reflects obscene levels of inequality and legacies of
colonialism and white supremacy in the United States,
and also the world. Wealth accumulation always goes
hand-in-hand with exploitation and dispossession. In
this country, enslaved Black labor first built US wealth
atop stolen Native land. The 1862 Homestead Act opened
up 270m acres of Indigenous territory – which amounts to
10% of US land – for white settlement. Black, Mexican,
Asian, and Native people, of course, were categorically
excluded from the benefits of a federal program that
subsidized and protected generations of white wealth.</p>
<p>The billionaire media mogul Ted Turner epitomizes such
disparities. He owns 2m acres and has the world’s
largest privately owned buffalo herd. Those animals,
which are sacred to my people and were nearly hunted to
extinction by settlers, are preserved today on nearly <a
href="https://www.tedturner.com/turner-ranches/turner-ranch-map/bad-river-ranch-south-dakota/"
data-link-name="in body link">200,000 acres of
Turner’s ranchland</a> within the boundaries of the
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty territory in the western half
of what is now the state of South Dakota, land that was
once guaranteed by the US government to be a <a
href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=42&page=transcript"
data-link-name="in body link">“permanent home”</a> for
Lakota people.</p>
<p>The gun and the whip may not accompany land
acquisitions this time around. But billionaire class
assertions that they are philosopher kings and
climate-conscious investors who know better than the
original caretakers are little more than ruses for what
amounts to a 21st century land grab – with big payouts
in a for-profit economy seeking “green” solutions.</p>
<p>Our era is dominated by the ultra-rich, the climate
crisis and a burgeoning green capitalism. And Bill
Gates’ new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
positions himself as a thought leader in how to stop
putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and how to
fund what he has <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=162153235282577"
data-link-name="in body link">called elsewhere</a> a
“global green revolution” to help poor farmers mitigate
climate change. What expertise in climate science or
agriculture Gates possesses beyond being filthy rich is
anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>When pressed during a book discussion on Reddit about
why he’s gobbling up so much farmland, Gates <a
href="https://agfundernews.com/bill-gates-tells-reddit-why-hes-acquired-so-much-farmland.html"
data-link-name="in body link">claimed</a>, “It is not
connected to climate [change].” The decision, he said,
came from his “investment group.” Cascade Investment,
the firm making these acquisitions, is <a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-mans-job-make-bill-gates-richer-1411093811"
data-link-name="in body link">controlled</a> by Gates.
And the firm <a
href="https://www.agriculture.com/farm-management/farm-land/bill-gates-is-about-to-change-the-way-amer-ca-farms"
data-link-name="in body link">said</a> it’s “very
supportive of sustainable farming”. It also is a
shareholder in the plant-based protein companies Beyond
Meat and Impossible Foods as well as the farming
equipment manufacturer John Deere. His firm’s largest
farmland acquisition happened in 2017, when it acquired
61 farming properties from a Canadian investment firm to
the tune of <a
href="https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/"
data-link-name="in body link">$500m</a>.</p>
<p>Arable land is not just profitable. There’s a more
cynical calculation. Investment firms are making the
argument farmlands will meet <a
href="https://www.ft.com/content/d158779e-368b-482b-9734-b06cf7fde382"
data-link-name="in body link">“carbon-neutral”</a>
targets for sustainable investment portfolios while
anticipating an increase of agricultural productivity
and revenue. And while Bill Gates frets about eating
cheeseburgers in his book – for the amount of greenhouse
gases the meat industry produces largely for the
consumption of rich countries – his massive carbon
footprint has little to do with his personal diet and is
not forgivable by simply buying more land to sequester
more carbon.</p>
<p>The world’s richest 1% emit double the carbon of the
poorest 50%, an 2020 <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam"
data-link-name="in body link">Oxfam study</a> found.
According to Forbes<em>, </em>the world’s billionaires
saw their wealth swell by <a
href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/12/16/the-worlds-billionaires-have-gotten-19-trillion-richer-in-2020/?sh=3fe26be87386"
data-link-name="in body link">$1.9tn in 2020</a>,
while more than <a
href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/economy/job-losses-women-pandemic/index.html"
data-link-name="in body link">22 million US workers</a>
(mostly women) lost their jobs.</p>
<p>Like wealth, land ownership is becoming concentrated
into fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a greater push
for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming
techniques to generate greater returns. One per cent of
the world’s farms control 70% of the world’s farmlands,
<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/farmland-inequality-is-rising-around-the-world-finds-report?fbclid=IwAR2jnk1ETI2U3MKe_NO3C_pttjruVM6pWlLpvRsTI1EosPscunfz9u3Uk-E"
data-link-name="in body link">one report found</a>.
The biggest shift in recent years from small to big
farms was in the US.</p>
<p>The principal danger of private farmland owners like <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/billgates"
data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="in
body link">Bill Gates</a> is not their professed
support of sustainable agriculture often found in
philanthropic work – it’s the monopolistic role they
play in determining our food systems and land use
patterns.</p>
<p>Small farmers and Indigenous people are more cautious
with the use of land. For Indigenous caretakers, land
use isn’t premised on a return of investments; it’s
about maintaining the land for the next generation,
meeting the needs of the present, and a respect for the
diversity of life. That’s why lands still managed by
Indigenous peoples worldwide protect and sustain <a
href="http://www.fao.org/indigenous-peoples/news-article/en/c/1029002/"
data-link-name="in body link">80% of the world’s
biodiversity</a>, practices anathema to industrial
agriculture.</p>
<p>The average person has nothing in common with
mega-landowners like Bill Gates or Ted Turner. The land
we all live on should not be the sole property of a few.
The extensive tax avoidance by these titans of industry
will always far exceed their supposed charitable
donations to the public. The “billionaire knows best”
mentality detracts from the deep-seated realities of
colonialism and white supremacy, and it ignores those
who actually know best how to use and live with the
land. These billionaires have nothing to offer us in
terms of saving the planet – unless it’s our land back.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux
Tribe. He is an assistant professor in the American
studies department at the University of New Mexico.
In 2014, he co-founded <a
href="https://therednation.org/"
data-link-name="in body link">The Red Nation</a>,
an Indigenous resistance organization. He is the
author of the book <a
href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2953-our-history-is-the-future"
data-link-name="in body link">Our History Is the
Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access
Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous
Resistance</a> (Verso, 2019)</p>
</li>
</ul>
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