Farm and Food: Beware of Philosopher Kings and Prophets of ‘Synthetic Alternatives’

By Alan Guebert

The Hawk Eye

Shortly after America’s largest private farmland owners, Microsoft billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates, acknowledged their pending divorce, some wag on Twitter wondered what might be the appropriate time to wait before he approached the soon-to-be-former missus to ask about renting some of her farmland.

While he was joking, it’s no joke that the about-to-split pair owns the largest amount of working farmland in the nation. According to the Winter 2020 issue of The Land Report, a quarterly magazine that tracks U.S. land sales, Bill and Melinda Gates now own 242,000 acres of farmland worth “more than $690 million.”

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