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This is the first time that Gates has made public comment on land acquisitions by entities associated with him and his wife Melinda, as they were declared the largest private owners in the United States.
Answering the question “Hey, Bill! Why do you buy so much farmland? “Said by a Reddit user, said research on seeds and biofuels were the main reasons.
“My investment group had this option. It’s not about climate change,” Gates said, adding that the session was about the launch of his book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” “The agricultural sector is important. With more productive seeds we can prevent deforestation and help Africa cope with the difficult climate it faces. It is not known how cheap biofuels will be, but if they are cheap they will solve emissions from planes and trucks. ”.
In January, the American magazine “The Land Report” revealed that Bill and Melinda Gates have the largest portfolio of private farmland in the United States, totaling 98,000 hectares.
These are part of the 109,000 ha belonging to the couple and associated entities, located in 19 US states, with the largest properties in Louisiana (28,000 ha), Arkansas (19,500 ha) and Arizona (10,500 ha).
A spokesperson for Cascade Investments, likely the investment group mentioned by Bill Gates, who is its chairman, later avoided commenting on specific properties. But he told The Land Report: “Cascade strongly supports sustainable agriculture.” The company is a shareholder in the vegetable protein companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, as well as the agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere.
The largest acquisition was made in 2017, when it paid $ 520 million for 61 properties from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). That land, which appears to be the majority of Gates’ farm property, had previously belonged to the Agriculture Company of America, a real estate investment trust acquired by CPPIB in 2013.
In January, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it had created a new nonprofit called Gates Ag One, which would seek to “accelerate efforts to provide small farmers, many of them women, access to media and innovation. needed to sustainably improve crop productivity and ways to adapt to climate change. “
Other questions directed at Gates during the session addressed the entire agri-food system. One was about desalination of seawater to solve the world’s water shortage.
“We have a lot of water. The problem is that desalination and transportation to where it is needed is expensive,” Gates wrote. “For agricultural use, the costs are prohibitive. The new seeds may reduce the need for water, but in some areas it will not be possible to do much agriculture. “
Gates was also asked what “niche technologies” can play an important role in the fight against climate change.
“We need a lot of technology: synthetic meat, energy storage, new building materials,” he wrote. “We want to be receptive to ideas that seem crazy.”
In an interview promoting the book in MIT Technology Review last month, Gates argued that in high-income societies, beef consumption should be replaced by “synthetic” alternatives.
“I don’t believe in the poorest […] countries will consume synthetic meat. But I think all rich countries should switch to synthetic meat, “he said. When asked if” cell-raised meat “will ever be affordable, Gates said plant protein producers like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat” have a roadmap for quality and a roadmap for costs that makes them completely competitive. ”
