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Home › Topics › Agriculture › Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner
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BILL GATES: AMERICA’S TOP FARMLAND OWNER

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Eric OKeefe

The cofounder of Microsoft ranks as America’s largest private farmland owner. By
Eric O’Keefe 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.…

Read more ›






THE COFOUNDER OF MICROSOFT RANKS AS AMERICA’S LARGEST PRIVATE FARMLAND OWNER.

By Eric O’Keefe

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 reporting by Wendy
Culverwell in 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 Cocodrie? I forwarded the lead to our
Land Report 100 Research Team. Minutes later, a terse response arrived:

“Ever hear of Bill Gates?”

THE 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 Gateses’ 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 Gateses’ assets, Larson himself operates primarily through an
entity called Cascade Investment LLC.)

In 1994, the Gateses 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.

There was no public announcement, and no notice in the business press. Instead,
the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board revealed in the fine print of a
quarterly statement that it had sold $520 million in US farmland assets held by
Agriculture Company of America. Credit Chris Janiec at Agri Investor for this
eagle-eyed investigating. The Americas Editor at Agri Investor, Janiec reported
that the assets had been offered as a single block and “that Microsoft founder
Bill Gates is thought to be the buyer of CPPIB’s farmland.” Janiec stayed on the
story, and the following year, he confirmed the parameters of sale when he
reported the addition of 61 properties valued at approximately $500 million to
the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries’ (NCREIF) US Farmland
Index. This half-billion-dollar figure corroborated the AgCoA acquisition, and
the paper trail led directly to Cascade Investment LLC.

All told, the 2017 acquisition of AgCoA and the 2018 acquisition of the 100
Circles tract in the Horse Heaven Hills of Eastern Washington total an
investment in farmland assets of more than $690 million. Janiec’s sources said
some of the AgCoA assets were quickly sold off, but according to the Land Report
100 Research Team, an estimated 242,000 acres of farmland remained.

Yet farmland assets aren’t the sole component of the Gateses’ landholdings. In
2017, Cascade Investment bought a “significant stake” in 24,800 acres of
transitional land on the western edge of Phoenix, the most populous city in
Arizona and the 10th largest metropolitan area in the country. The acreage sits
off Interstate 10, and it is poised to be accessible by Interstate 11, a
proposed highway that would traverse 5 miles of the 40-square-mile holding. At
buildout, the Belmont development will create a brand-new metropolis, one
similar in size to the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, home to Arizona State University
and almost 200,000 residents. According to The Arizona Republic, Belmont is
projected to include up to 80,000 homes; 3,800 acres of industrial, office, and
retail space; 3,400 acres of open space; and 470 acres for public schools.

Cascade Investment doubled down on Phoenix transitional land two years later
when it made a second major investment by acquiring more than 2,800 acres known
as Spurlock Ranch in Buckeye for $25 million.



SUSTAINABLE INVESTING

A spokesman for Cascade Investment declined to comment on any of the details
associated with these transactions or the Gateses’ holdings, other than to say
that Cascade is very supportive of sustainable farming.

Much like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation uses science and technology to
achieve a number of worthy goals — including transitioning millions of people
out of poverty, improving people’s health and well-being, and ensuring that all
people have access to opportunities necessary to succeed in school and in life —
Cascade’s farmland holdings also aim to further laudable objectives.

In January 2020, The Land Report announced the launch of a sustainability
standard that was developed by US farmland owners and operators. Called Leading
Harvest, the organization’s goal is to create a sustainability standard that can
be implemented across the greatest swath of agricultural acreage. Currently,
more than 2 million acres in 22 states and an additional 2 million acres in
seven countries are represented. Among the participants in the 13-member
Sustainable Agriculture Working Group are Ceres Partners, Hancock Natural
Resources Group, The Rohaytn Group, and UBS Farmland Investors.

Not surprisingly, one of Leading Harvest’s other inaugural members is a Cascade
entity called Cottonwood Ag Management. Committing the resources to launch this
all-important standard validates the assertion that Cascade supports sustainable
strategies that advance resiliency and efficiency, retain talent, and reduce
regulatory burdens.

Although the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has no ties whatsoever to Cascade
or its investments, it also has a farmland initiative: Gates Ag One, which has
established its headquarters in the Greater St. Louis area. According to the St.
Louis Business Journal, Gates Ag One will focus on research that helps
“smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low-
and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable.”

A CLOSING NOTE

Remember that metal-sided building down near the Bayou Cocodrie? Turns out that
very same property had caught my eye way back when The Land Report was preparing
to launch in 2006. Does the name Bernie Ebbers ring a bell? Once upon a time,
the business press dubbed the colorful entrepreneur “the telecom cowboy.” That
was before the Edmonton native was put on trial for his role in what was, at the
time, the largest corporate bankruptcy filing in US history.

In 2005, the former WorldCom CEO was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy,
and filing false reports that were instrumental in WorldCom’s $11 billion dollar
accounting fraud. After losing his appeal in 2006, Ebbers spent most of the rest
of his life in a federal prison before being granted compassionate release by a
federal judge in 2020. He died at home surrounded by his family.

Ebbers was many things — a dreamer, a liar, a swindler — and he loved land. In
1998 when he was the toast of Wall Street, the telecom cowboy paid British
Columbia’s Woodward family the astronomical sum of $73 million for Canada’s
largest ranch: 500,000-acre Douglas Lake, a 22,000-head cattle operation. Ebbers
subsequently pledged Douglas Lake as collateral for $400 million he ended up
borrowing from WorldCom, and in 2003, WorldCom sold Douglas Lake to Kroenke
Ranches. The $68.5 million that Kroenke Ranches paid was applied to Ebbers’s
IOU. He also owned a 26,236-acre Louisiana farm. It, too, was sold, on September
25, 2006, the day before Ebbers began serving his sentence at the Oakdale
Federal Correctional Institution. It was his last deal as a free man.

When Ebbers owned this Louisiana farm, it was known as Angelina Plantation. And
its headquarters was in — you guessed it — Monterey, Louisiana. That was the
missing piece of the puzzle I had been searching for as I read the Tri-City
Herald story. In a former life, Angelina Agriculture, the purchaser that paid
$171 million for 100 Circles in 2018, was, in fact, Bernie Ebbers’s Angelina
Plantation. The day before he went to prison, Ebbers sold Angelina for $32
million. The farm was subsequently sold to AgCoA, which was acquired by the
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In 2017, Angelina Plantation changed hands
one more time and became one of the principal farmland assets in the Gateses’
Cascade Investment’s portfolio.

It took a dozen years, but the ownership of that Louisiana farmland went from
Bernie Ebbers to Bill Gates with a couple of stops in between. I readily admit
forgetting where and when I first caught wind of it, but the moment I read that
Tri-City Herald story, I knew the ending definitely needed a rewrite. Steve
Everett would be proud.

This article was updated to credit Wendy Culverwell as the reporter who broke
the story of the Horse Heaven Hills transaction in the Tri-City Herald.

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‹ Water Futures Start Trading Amid Growing Fears of Scarcity
The Land Report Winter 2020 ›
Tagged with: Bill Gates, Cascade Investment, Eric O'Keefe, Land Report 100,
Microsoft, Tri-City Herald, Wendy Culverwell
Posted in Agriculture, Cattle, Eric OKeefe, Feature, Great Plains, Land Report
100, Midwest, Pacific, South, Southwest, West



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