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Source: The Land Report
Bill Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner
January 11, 2021 | by Eric OKeefe
The co-founder of Microsoft and his wife rank as America's largest private farmland owners.
Source: The Land Report
Bill Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner
January 11, 2021 | by Eric OKeefe
Call it a hunch, but the story did not jibe. I scanned the headline for the umpteenth time and then read and reread the pertinent details. Something was missing. Either that or I had a screw loose. According to the Tri-City Herald, a 14,500-acre swath of choice Eastern Washington farmland in the Horse Heaven Hills of Benton County had just traded hands for almost $171 million. That's a ginormous deal, one that pencils out to almost $12,000 per acre for a whole lot of acres. Pretty pricey dirt, right? That's exactly what I thought. Especially when it comes to row crops like sweet corn and wheat, which were grown in rotation with potatoes on 100 Circles, which is the name of the property that changed hands. Then again, farmers and investors in the Mid-Columbia River market expect to pay $10,000 to $15,000 for good ground. Anyone who has ever studied the Columbia River Basin knows that the tillable acreage there is coveted ground, a geologic wonder. The soil profile and underlying silty loess are in a league of their own.
I had gained this smidgen of geologic proficiency while researching our 2018 Farmland Deal of the Year, Weidert Farm, in neighboring Walla Walla County. One of the most telling moments in the field that summer came when a soil scientist by the name of Alan Busacca grabbed a shovel and stepped into a 10-foot trench that had been ripped open on the farm by a Caterpillar 336. Dusky layers of silt and sand towered over the 6-foot-tall retired Washington State professor. There wasn't a rock, let alone a pebble, or even a root to be seen in the soil. Busacca was in his element: It was some of the richest farmland in the Lower 48. And from an agricultural perspective, the region surrounding Walla Walla and the Horse Heaven Hills has evolved into a commercial hub, complete with controlled atmosphere (CA) storage, state-of-the-art transportation infrastructure, and ready access to low-cost hydropower.
These are a few of the reasons why savvy investors have been plowing millions of dollars into farmland on both the Oregon and the Washington sides of the Columbia River Gorge. At current valuations, it's one of the nation’s best farmland opportunities. In 2018, when 100 Circles sold, it was even better.
More often than not, farmland sales involve hundreds of acres. Thousand-acre transactions — such as the sale of 6,000- acre Weidert Farm to Farmland L.P. two years ago and the 6,175-acre Broetje Orchards acquisition by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan last year — are blue-moon events. Tens of thousands of acres? Only sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors can stroke a check for tracts in that league, which is exactly what occurred on the sell side of the 100 Circles transaction: The seller was John Hancock Life Insurance, a multibillion-dollar asset manager with key holdings in all the major US markets as well as Canada and Australia.
The story went dark on the buy side, however. The Tri-City Herald reported that the purchaser was a "Louisiana investor," a limited liability company associated with Angelina Agriculture of Monterey, Louisiana. Sorry, but that didn't pass the sniff test.
The Land Report tracks numerous Louisiana landowners; Angelina Agriculture is not one of them. Let's call that strike one. The burgeoning metropolis of Monterey, population 462, rang a bell, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't connect the dots to anyone whom we had profiled in The Land Report or, for that matter, anyone who was on our watch list. So I took a look at Dun & Bradstreet. At its listed headquarters — 8318 Highway 565 — Angelina Agriculture boasted two employees and reported annual revenues just north of $300,000. Given the size and cost of 100 Circles, both of those figures made no sense at all. Strike two. How about Google Maps? An aerial image of the Highway 565 address revealed a small metal-sided building off by itself in the woods. Strike three, right?
One of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies is the 1999 mystery/thriller True Crime. In it, the four-time Academy Award winner plays an over-the-hill journalist who has "a nose" for a story. I am quite confident that Eastwood's character, Steve Everett, would have picked up the stench from this setup a mile off: a $171 million acquisition by an LLC with two employees in a metal-sided building down a dirt road off the Bayou Teche? I forwarded the lead to our Land Report 100 Research Team. Minutes later, a terse response arrived:
"Ever hear of Bill Gates?"
THE PAPER TRAIL
Actually, when it comes to the extensive farmland portfolio of Bill and Melinda Gates, the question should be, "Ever hear of Michael Larson?" For the last 25 years, the Claremont McKenna College alum has managed the Gates' personal portfolio as well as the considerable holdings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Although our researchers identified dozens of different entities that own the Gates' assets, Larson himself operates primarily through an entity called Cascade Investment LLC.)
In 1994, the Gates' hired the former Putnam Investments bond-fund manager to diversify the couple's portfolio away from the Microsoft co-founder's 45 percent stake in the technology giant while maintaining comparable or better returns. According to a 2014 profile of Larson in the Wall Street Journal, these investments include a substantial stake in AutoNation, hospitality interests such as the Charles Hotel in Cambridge and the Four Seasons in San Francisco, and "at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, and other states … ." According to the Land Report 100 Research Team, that figure is currently more than twice that amount, which means Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego: Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.
The Gateses' largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017: a group of farmland assets owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Based in Toronto, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began assembling an agricultural portfolio in 2013, when it acquired AgCoA, aka, Agricultural Company of America. This private US farmland REIT was a joint venture between Duquesne Capital Management and Goldman Sachs that launched in 2007. Over the next five years, AgCoA acquired more than 100,000 acres in nine states. By the time it was sold to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2013, AgCoA ranked as one of the leading institutional owners of row crop farmland in the US.
After AgCoA, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board acquired a second tranche of farmland assets when it paid $2.5 billion for a 40 percent stake in Glencore Agricultural Products in 2016. The very next year, however, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began shedding these very same farmland assets as quickly as it had acquired them. And it did this so quietly one might even say it was done in secret.
Please go to The Land Report to read more.
I had gained this smidgen of geologic proficiency while researching our 2018 Farmland Deal of the Year, Weidert Farm, in neighboring Walla Walla County. One of the most telling moments in the field that summer came when a soil scientist by the name of Alan Busacca grabbed a shovel and stepped into a 10-foot trench that had been ripped open on the farm by a Caterpillar 336. Dusky layers of silt and sand towered over the 6-foot-tall retired Washington State professor. There wasn't a rock, let alone a pebble, or even a root to be seen in the soil. Busacca was in his element: It was some of the richest farmland in the Lower 48. And from an agricultural perspective, the region surrounding Walla Walla and the Horse Heaven Hills has evolved into a commercial hub, complete with controlled atmosphere (CA) storage, state-of-the-art transportation infrastructure, and ready access to low-cost hydropower.
These are a few of the reasons why savvy investors have been plowing millions of dollars into farmland on both the Oregon and the Washington sides of the Columbia River Gorge. At current valuations, it's one of the nation’s best farmland opportunities. In 2018, when 100 Circles sold, it was even better.
More often than not, farmland sales involve hundreds of acres. Thousand-acre transactions — such as the sale of 6,000- acre Weidert Farm to Farmland L.P. two years ago and the 6,175-acre Broetje Orchards acquisition by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan last year — are blue-moon events. Tens of thousands of acres? Only sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors can stroke a check for tracts in that league, which is exactly what occurred on the sell side of the 100 Circles transaction: The seller was John Hancock Life Insurance, a multibillion-dollar asset manager with key holdings in all the major US markets as well as Canada and Australia.
The story went dark on the buy side, however. The Tri-City Herald reported that the purchaser was a "Louisiana investor," a limited liability company associated with Angelina Agriculture of Monterey, Louisiana. Sorry, but that didn't pass the sniff test.
The Land Report tracks numerous Louisiana landowners; Angelina Agriculture is not one of them. Let's call that strike one. The burgeoning metropolis of Monterey, population 462, rang a bell, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't connect the dots to anyone whom we had profiled in The Land Report or, for that matter, anyone who was on our watch list. So I took a look at Dun & Bradstreet. At its listed headquarters — 8318 Highway 565 — Angelina Agriculture boasted two employees and reported annual revenues just north of $300,000. Given the size and cost of 100 Circles, both of those figures made no sense at all. Strike two. How about Google Maps? An aerial image of the Highway 565 address revealed a small metal-sided building off by itself in the woods. Strike three, right?
One of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies is the 1999 mystery/thriller True Crime. In it, the four-time Academy Award winner plays an over-the-hill journalist who has "a nose" for a story. I am quite confident that Eastwood's character, Steve Everett, would have picked up the stench from this setup a mile off: a $171 million acquisition by an LLC with two employees in a metal-sided building down a dirt road off the Bayou Teche? I forwarded the lead to our Land Report 100 Research Team. Minutes later, a terse response arrived:
"Ever hear of Bill Gates?"
HE PROMISED LAND | Farmland in Eastern Washington and neighboring Oregon is blessed with abundant moisture, cheap electricity, and unrivaled soils.
THE PAPER TRAIL
Actually, when it comes to the extensive farmland portfolio of Bill and Melinda Gates, the question should be, "Ever hear of Michael Larson?" For the last 25 years, the Claremont McKenna College alum has managed the Gates' personal portfolio as well as the considerable holdings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Although our researchers identified dozens of different entities that own the Gates' assets, Larson himself operates primarily through an entity called Cascade Investment LLC.)
In 1994, the Gates' hired the former Putnam Investments bond-fund manager to diversify the couple's portfolio away from the Microsoft co-founder's 45 percent stake in the technology giant while maintaining comparable or better returns. According to a 2014 profile of Larson in the Wall Street Journal, these investments include a substantial stake in AutoNation, hospitality interests such as the Charles Hotel in Cambridge and the Four Seasons in San Francisco, and "at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, and other states … ." According to the Land Report 100 Research Team, that figure is currently more than twice that amount, which means Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego: Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.
The Gateses' largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017: a group of farmland assets owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Based in Toronto, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began assembling an agricultural portfolio in 2013, when it acquired AgCoA, aka, Agricultural Company of America. This private US farmland REIT was a joint venture between Duquesne Capital Management and Goldman Sachs that launched in 2007. Over the next five years, AgCoA acquired more than 100,000 acres in nine states. By the time it was sold to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2013, AgCoA ranked as one of the leading institutional owners of row crop farmland in the US.
After AgCoA, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board acquired a second tranche of farmland assets when it paid $2.5 billion for a 40 percent stake in Glencore Agricultural Products in 2016. The very next year, however, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began shedding these very same farmland assets as quickly as it had acquired them. And it did this so quietly one might even say it was done in secret.
Please go to The Land Report to read more.
________
Be assured Bill being promoted as the "2nd wealthiest man in the world" (he is a menace to society) will be eating the finest medium rare organic fillet mignon beef and vegetables all prepared by professional chefs served to him along with some of the world's most expensive wines from a private stock for his private party as they cruise the world's oceans on Bill's new $644 million yacht planning their future. For Gates if 700,000 people die from the Covid injection does anyone really think he gives a shit about your health? That's how these people think. A computer geek goes on to become the world's Czar on farming, food and vaccines (injections)? Who appointed him?
Be assured Bill being promoted as the "2nd wealthiest man in the world" (he is a menace to society) will be eating the finest medium rare organic fillet mignon beef and vegetables all prepared by professional chefs served to him along with some of the world's most expensive wines from a private stock for his private party as they cruise the world's oceans on Bill's new $644 million yacht planning their future. For Gates if 700,000 people die from the Covid injection does anyone really think he gives a shit about your health? That's how these people think. A computer geek goes on to become the world's Czar on farming, food and vaccines (injections)? Who appointed him?
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Such commercial warfare treachery...
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