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<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland">Read
in the Guardian</a><br>
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<h1 class="css-cg9hi0 seo-highlighter">Bill Gates is the
biggest private owner of farmland in the United States.
Why?</h1>
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<div class="css-5dwu6m"><a rel="author"
data-link-name="auto tag link"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nick-estes">Nick
Estes</a></div>
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<h4>Gates has been buying land like it’s going out of style. He
now owns more farmland than my entire Native American nation</h4>
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<div class="css-1nfcn93"><source
media="(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25),
(min-resolution: 120dpi)"><source><img alt="‘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.’"
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/374b3c232df9ff7069ea40362c198183b6eec3ee/0_0_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=4c5222bbc6f1cc8c58719ee2ea8ba8e3"
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<figure><b><i><font size="-1"><span class="css-l6t30p"><figcaption
class="css-xe26t6"><span class="css-nsq509">‘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.’</span> Photograph: Denis
Balibouse/Reuters</figcaption></span></font></i></b></figure>
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<p class="css-e0yuwt"><span class="css-cw340e"><span
class="css-1ac5g5w">B</span></span><span
class="css-e0yuwt">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 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 Yakama territory – for
$171m helped him get that title.</span></p>
<p class="css-e0yuwt">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>
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<p class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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>
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<blockquote class="css-6n7j50">The land we all live on should not
be the sole property of a few</blockquote>
<footer><cite></cite></footer>
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<p class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">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 class="css-e0yuwt">
<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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