Bill Gates wins legal approval to buy huge swath of North Dakota farmland worth $13.5M

Bill Gates has secured legal approval for the controversial purchase of thousands of acres of prime North Dakota farmland

• The Depression-era law prohibits corporations or limited liability companies from owning farmland or ranchland, but allows individual trusts to own the land if it is leased to farmers.
• Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in America after quietly amassing some 270,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last year's edition of the Land Report 100, an annual survey of the nation's largest landowners.

The purchase of the land in North Dakota had raised legal questions as well as concerns that ultrarich landowners do not share the state's values

• Gates' firm, Red River Trust, purchased $13.5 million worth of land in two counties from wealthy northeastern North Dakota potato growers Campbell Farms
• About 2100 acres of land were sold in the deal, AgWeek reported.
• In a curious move, the Campbell family in February filed a partnership name certificate with the North Dakota secretary of state naming their farming operation "Red River Trust."
• North Dakota's Agriculture Commissioner, Republican Doug Goehring, previously said that many people feel they are being exploited by the ultra-rich who buy land but do not necessarily share the values of the state

The 1932 law:

• Exempted if land is necessary for residential or commercial development, or for uses supportive of or ancillary to adjacent non agricultural land for the benefit of both land parcels.
• A federal judge in 2018 ruled the law constitutional after a conservative farm group argued that it limits business options for producers and interferes with interstate commerce by barring out-of-state corporations from being involved in North Dakota's farm industry.

Gates already has an impressive land portfolio

• As of 2021, his largest holdings in the U.S. included 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, 25,750 acres in Arizona, 20,588 acres in Nebraska and 16,097 acres in Washington state.
• Gates also reportedly shopped for hundreds of acres of farmland in Turkey while vacationing aboard a superyacht last November. It is unclear if he ended up purchasing the land.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971639/Bill-Gates-wins-legal-approval-buy-huge-swath-North-Dakota-farmland-worth-13-5M.html