There’s no argument that Gates et al has been buying up Midwest farmland. The largest total number I’ve seen is 250,000 acres. Yeah, that’s big but not remarkable. My own family runs ranches in that size range.
The thing I’ve been watching is how he manages it. It seems like he has a hankering for share cropping but most of us know how that worked out in the early 20th century. But he has to work it as opposed to laying fallow. The property taxes have to be paid. As big as he is he’s not big enough to finance the counties who would otherwise be taking the land for back taxes. And since he’s paying top dollar the local counties will love his checks.
Remember how it worked out for Ted Turner when he tried buffalo ranching in Montana? There’s a big cartoon on the office wall at one of the ranches: How to retire from ranching with a million dollars——start with 12 and quit when you still have one.
True Rupert Murdoch just purchased the 340,000 acre Beaverhead Ranch working cattle ranch in Montana. The land is good for grazing not crop production. Excluding the Arizona land most of Gates’ land is crop production land and he has the wealth to pay the taxes on the land even if he leaves the land fallow. When the term sustainable farming is used the motives of the land owner IMO are political not agricultural.
“Remember how it worked out for Ted Turner...
Ted’s ranch is doing very well and he’s not losing any money on it (a friends husband is the ranch manager).
Ted’s ranch is, in fact, four ranches combined into one LARGE ranch - the last one he purchased was the VonTrapp ranch.
I look out my south windows and can see his ranch everyday it’s not socked in from clouds.
On the bright side, the farmland will be confiscated from Gates as a result of Trump’s EO regarding human traffickers.