OFFICIAL: Major Backlash Against Bill Gates’s Farmland Purchases

William (Bill) H. Gates, founder, technology advisor of Microsoft Corporation visits The Department of Energy on October 8, 2013. (PHOTO CREDIT: DOE PHOTOGRAPHER, KEN SHIPP)

Bill Gates has been acquiring vast tracts of American farmland, and when he legal maneuvering to do so in North Dakota, officials in the state began receiving major backlash. Dr. Joseph Mercola of Mercola.com worries that America is facing modern-day feudalism. He writes:

A decades-old anticorporate-farming law in North Dakota makes it illegal for corporations and limited liability companies to purchase farmland in the state. So when Bill Gates received legal approval to do just that, it did more than raise a few eyebrows.

Gates secured approval to purchase 2,100 acres from Campbell Farms, a potato grower in northeastern North Dakota, for $13.5 million.¹ This, along with the 270,000 other acres of farmland he’s previously purchased in the U.S., makes him the largest private farmland owner in the country.²

Doug Goehring, North Dakota’s Agriculture Commissioner, told KFYR-TV that he’s gotten a lot of backlash since word got out. “I’ve gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it’s not even from that neighborhood. Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this.”³

Moving Toward Modern-Day Feudalism

Gates was able to purchase the land legally via a loophole that allows individual trusts to own farmland as long as it’s leased to farmers.⁴ The law is meant to protect family farms because the farmland must be leased back to them.⁵ However, while this is Gates’ intention, it amounts to modern-day feudalism.

“If this was the game Risk, Bill Gates is closing in. He’s acquiring all of the territory. If this was Monopoly or any other board game, you’d think, ‘Uh-oh, Gates is up to something,” Russel Brand said, referring to data that Gates owns sizeable amounts of farmland in 18 states.⁶

Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, is among those who objects to Gates’ increasing ownership of farmland. First off, he states, Gates isn’t a farmer. He doesn’t know what to do with the land:⁷

“I have concerns about Gates controlling farmland. Just like I don’t want a child abuser controlling even one child, I don’t want him to control a single acre. First, land is precious. It may be more precious than anything.

I hate to see someone, who has no idea what to do with it, be put in a position to control it. How well do you think that I would do running a tech company or financial institution? It’s the same logic as letting a guy like Gates manage something as complex as an ecosystem. He lacks the understanding to steward it properly.”

The Secrecy Is Unsettling

What else is unsettling, Harris says, is the secrecy behind Gates’ land purchases, which are often made under the cover of investment firms. Eric O’Keefe’s magazine, The Land Report, puts out a list of the 100 biggest landowners in the U.S. each year. A 2020 purchase of 14,500 “prime” acres in Washington state caught O’Keefe’s attention, as he calls any sale of more than 1,000 acres “blue moon events.”

When he dug deeper, the purchaser of the 14,500 acres — in the heart of some of the most expensive acreage in America — was recorded as a small Louisiana company. “That immediately set off alarm bells,” O’Keefe told the New York Post.⁸ It turned out the company was acting on behalf of Cascade Investment, LLC for Bill Gates.

“Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego,” O’Keefe wrote. “Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.”⁹ Clearly Gates has a big vision for all that land, but unfortunately it doesn’t involve organic, biodynamic or regenerative farming, which are needed to heal ecosystems and produce truly sustainable, nourishing food for future generations.

Instead, the acreage seems earmarked for even more genetically engineered (GE) corn and soy crops — the base foods for what will become an increasingly synthetic, ultra-processed food supply focused on fake meat. As Harris wrote on his blog:¹⁰

“An article that was dated May 4, 2021 informed us that Gates has purchased over 200,000 acres in 18 states. Georgia was not listed as one of the 18 states, but an acquaintance of mine sold his farm located in Georgia to Gates prior to that time. What else are they lying about?”