Bill Gates’ farmland: a quarter-million acre missed opportunity

By Erica Campbell and Katie Fettes 

Few things are worse to a farmer than losing their land – except, perhaps, losing it to a corporate land baron. 

Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, is now the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. And farmers are paying attention. When The Land Report revealed that Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland across 19 states, it caught the ear of regenerative farmer Will Harris of White Oak Pastures. 

“I hate to see someone, who has no idea what to do with [the land], be put in a position to control it,” Harris wrote earlier this month. “How well do you think I would do running a tech company or financial institution? He lacks the understanding to steward it properly.”

Harris has managed his fifth-generation farm in Bluffton, Georgia, for over 25 years using regenerative agriculture – a set of principles and practices that combines Indigenous knowledge, holistic management, and cutting-edge science. Regenerative producers are rebuilding soil health, reducing reliance on expensive inputs, boosting yields and profits, mitigating floods and drought, growing healthier food, and restoring biodiversity – all while reversing climate change. 

Thousands of farmers have embraced these practices as a way to tackle climate threats – a connection Gates has not yet made. “My investment group chose to do this,” Gates explained of his farmland holdings. “It is not connected to climate.” 

In 2010, Gates told the world we need miracles to avoid a climate disaster. The truth is, the miracle is right beneath our feet. Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon sink on the planet, and regenerative agriculture can unlock much of this potential. Research has found that agricultural carbon sequestration could draw down anywhere from 20-100% of annual CO2 emissions. It’s a low-cost, shovel-ready solution with incredible co-benefits.

Yet Gates’ separation of his personal investments from his climate preachings reveals a fundamental disconnect and casts a shadow over farm country. His land assets are operated by a patchwork of producers and companies across the country, where scale has tended towards monoculture and industrial production. Take a recent purchase – 14,500 acres in Washington that supply McDonalds with potatoes grown in “circles so big they're visible from space.” 

The land is enrolled in Leading Harvest, a new organization advancing “sustainable agriculture” that counts large corporate farmland owners as partners. But with the majority of American soils already heavily degraded, sustaining is just not good enough. We need a new framework: we need to regenerate. 

When Will Harris talks about regeneration, he means real farmers putting carbon back into the soil. He also means decentralizing the agriculture sector and rebuilding rural economies, like he’s done in Georgia.

But Gates has jumped on the farmland consolidation trend, which is shrinking the number of independent farmers and depleting farmers’ returns. Meanwhile, skyrocketing land prices are making it harder to get into farming in the first place – especially for young and beginning farmers and farmers of color, who often seek to practice climate-resilient, regenerative agriculture. It’s all driving a rising trend where fewer farmers own their own land. A whopping 40% of U.S. agricultural land is leased by the operator rather than owned, which makes investing in long-term soil health-building practices even more difficult. 

By changing the way his land is managed, Gates could change history. For someone who has spoken so publicly about the need to address climate change, how he manages his land could very well be one of the most important decisions he ever makes – not just for his legacy but for the planet. If he were to partner with regenerative producers on his 242,000 acres, Gates’ soil could: 

• Sequester up to 4 million metric tons of CO2 per year 
• Store up to 6.53 billion additional gallons of water per year, mitigating drought, floods, and runoff 
• Save and reverse the loss of up to 1.4 million tons of topsoil per year 
• Save up to 32.9 million pounds of chemical fertilizer per year while maintaining productivity 
• Usher in a new generation of climate-focused farmers and ranchers, setting an example for corporate land ownership

Regenerative agriculture also offers security for big landowners like Gates. While land has historically been a stable investment, the costs of climate change are climbing rapidly. If wealthy investors want to prevent their assets – and our food supply – from washing away in flood, drying up in a drought, or burning up in a wildfire, soil health is the best bet they can make.

Gates has proclaimed himself a climate and agriculture leader. Now it’s time for him to prove it by making the soil connection. The least he can do is take Will Harris up on the invitation to visit White Oak Pastures and see the transformative power of regenerative agriculture in action. 

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Erica Campbell is the policy director at Kiss the Ground. Katie Fettes is the programs manager at Land Core. Both organizations are part of Regenerate America, a bipartisan coalition advocating for rebuilding soil health through regenerative agriculture.