Beyond his involvement with Microsoft, Bill Gates has remained one of the richest people in the world for nearly four decades. Years after taking over at Microsoft, Bill Gates remains the ninth richest person in the world, according to the Billionaires List. ForbesIts assets are estimated at more than $131.8 billion.

Bill Gates’ investment portfolio. A large percentage of his wealth comes from various investments in shares of companies that deal with hotels, services and the environment. However, a significant part of his wealth is invested in farms and agricultural lands. According to the private portal Field ReportThe millionaire is one of the largest landowners in the US, with 111,000 acres of farmland.

Conspiracy theories debunkedThis strange investment has sparked all sorts of conspiracy theories. Pioneer millionaires could speculate on cropland to control most of the world’s food production and even usher in the era of synthetic foods. In one of the regular “Ask Anything” sessions on the millionaire’s Reddit profile, a user asked him, “Why are you buying up so much farmland, do you think it’s a problem with billionaires being rich?” How much land can you afford?

The tech mogul’s answer was a lot less complicated than one might expect: “I own less than 1/4,000 of the farmland in the United States. I invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There’s no grand plan. In fact, all of these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”

“I have land!” he returns. Owning farmland was once a sign of wealth. But technological advances caused investors to look elsewhere, but only for a short time. They soon realized that farmland was a limited asset and bought back large tracts of land for quick economic gain.

In this sense, Bill Gates was not the only person who bought large agricultural lands. Jeff Bezos, in a much more cautious manner and without highlighting the conspiracy theories around him, is well above Bill Gates in terms of the volume of cultivated land and is in twenty-fifth place on the list. Field ReportIt has nearly 170,000 hectares of land.

More profitability than the stock market. Farmland has become an increasingly profitable investment. According to official data from the United States Department of Agriculture, characters with no connection to the financial world, such as broadcaster Amouranth, have publicly confirmed that they have purchased farmland as an investment and have achieved returns close to 7.8%.

This high demand has led to the rise of real estate investment funds (REITs). Real Estate Investment Trust) has created investment products that allow small investors to enter this market with small amounts starting from $100 in these assets.

Warren Buffett also signs up to own landWarren Buffett is no newcomer to real estate investing, but he has always been a supporter of REIT funds to generate returns rather than own land directly. But he couldn’t resist purchasing a “small plot” of 1,781 acres in his home state of Nebraska.

“In 1986, I bought a 400-acre farm 50 miles north of Omaha from the FDIC. It cost me $280,000. I knew nothing about how to run the farm. I calculated that the normalized farm yield would be around 10%. I also thought that productivity would increase over time and that crop prices would increase. Both expectations were met,” Warren Buffett said in one of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letters to shareholders.

They are also becoming a haven asset in SpainWhile the stock market shows signs of exhaustion and inflation punishes savings, farmland has remained a safe haven with steady growth between 2.8% and 3.4%, according to Tinsa’s Spain 2023 Farmland Report.

This has attracted the attention of investment funds that have lost interest in the saturated housing market. According to data published by , its presence in the agricultural sector has increased by 150% in the last two years, taking advantage of the lack of generational change to acquire farmland at a good price. Assets.

In Xataka | 100,000 hectares and counting: Bill Gates builds the largest agricultural empire in the United States
Image | Pexels (Semenov Sergey), Wikimedia commons (Jennifer Jacquemart)