At present, Bill Gates has more than 270,000 acres of farmland in the United States, more than the entire area of New York City, worth about 690 million US dollars, and Amazon e-commerce giant Jeff Bezos owns 420,000 acres of land.
Not long ago, Congressman Dusty Johnson of South Dakota asked Bill Gates to explain why he bought a lot of farmland in the United States. He questioned Bill Gates' aggressive purchases of farmland to artificially inflate the prices of other commodities.
In the view of more industry insiders, Gates is one of the important purposes of buying farmland is to make financial investments and hedge stock market risks.
The average annual return on U.S. farmland investments for the 25 years through 2021 is 11.2 percent, according to commercial real estate analytics firm Green Street. The S&P 500 returned an average annual rate of 9.6% over the same period. In terms of volatility, the S&P 500 is twice as volatile as farmland investments.
Farmland looks like an attractive investment during times of soaring inflation and volatile stock prices. It is a real asset that performs well in an inflationary environment, provides stable returns over long-term holdings, and has a low correlation with financial assets.
In addition to financial investment, an article on the US agricultural website land income speculates that Bill Gates' purpose of buying farmland also includes technology agricultural production.
Gates purchased farmland including Louisiana (69,000 acres), Arkansas (48,000 acres), Nebraska (20,000+ acres), Arizona (25,000+ acres), Washington State (16,000 acres) , Mississippi, Indiana, and southern Florida.
According to NBC, this includes farmland that grows vegetables such as carrots, soybeans, and potatoes, some of which will be the source of McDonald's French fries.
The report also mentioned that many farmers have felt uneasy since the Land Report 100 showed that Bill Gates owns so much farmland.
To this, Bill Gates responded to how to use the farmland in the online Q&A on Reddit, "Our investment team bought the farmland. Farmland ownership is diverse, and we invest in farmland to increase yields. Some farmland close to cities may eventually have other uses. "
