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Bill Gates: The Data-Driven Land Baron Through his investment arm, Cascade Investment, Bill Gates has quietly become the largest private farmland owner in the United States, with roughly 270,000 acres spread across 17 states. He began assembling acreage in 2014 and accelerated through 2018, purchasing more than 14,000 acres in Washington's Horse Heaven Hills. In 2025, Cascade Investment added another 8,000 acres in Benton County, Washington, for $131 million. What's he doing with it? Not farming, not flipping. e land is leased to professional operators, generating stable yield while appreciating quietly. Gates treats farmland the way he once treated soware, as a scalable platform with low correlation to equity markets, high resilience, and massive optionality. A colleague once remarked that Gates views land the same way he views data: finite, foundational, and essential to civilization's infrastructure. Who Else Is Buying and Why Gates may lead the headlines, but he's hardly alone. In January, Stan Kroenke became the largest private landowner in the United States aer acquiring nearly a million acres in New Mexico, bringing his holdings to roughly 2.7 million acres. Deals like that are not tactical purchases. ey are generational positioning. Jeff Bezos holds thousands of acres in Texas and the American Southwest near Blue Origin's facilities, plus properties in Washington, D.C., Maui, and Manhattan. It's a portfolio built around access, safety, and future industry. e Emerson family, long in timber and forest tied to lumber, carbon, and ecological products, manages over 2 million acres. Foreign sovereign funds and private capital from Canada, Europe, and the Middle East are quietly acquiring U.S. farmland for stability, resource access, and dollar denominated growth. Across this spectrum, the pattern is unmistakable: ownership at scale equals influence. Why Land, and Why Now Scarcity. They're not making any more of it, and contiguous tracts are vanishing fastest. Climate migration. As coasts erode and urban density rises, inland acreage becomes both refuge and investment. Portfolio balance. Farmland has averaged about 10 percent annual returns since the 1990s with less volatility than stocks. Autonomy. Land offers privacy, security, and control, the new luxury. Legacy. Land is one of the few assets that symbolically can be handed down physically, emotionally, and in LLC's that favor tax considerations. e result? We're witnessing a 21st-century land rush, quieter, more strategic, and infinitely more global than the ones before it. And the brokers? You don't know their names, but they are a growing number of backroom dealers who can provide whatever you are looking for to round out a plan for the future. Land for your child adjoining each other? Farmland? Large tracts? Ok, you aren't Gates, but you should consider entering land into your portfolio of assets. Land has always been part of the America dream. Perhaps not as large a parcel as today's purchases, but it's a part of everyone's real estate future if they are paying attention. VUENJ.COM 79

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