re: LA: Bill Gates is spending money on huge swathes of land. Any of you Baws run into Gates

Big corporations and billionaires have been buying and selling farm land since the soybean boom of the 70s. Some of it they lease out, some of it they farm themselves. It’s the perfect way to move money around and show profit and loss in right places. My guess is Bill doesn’t even know owns property in Louisiana or anywhere else for that matter. 100k acres of land isn’t a drop in the bucket in the overall Gates portfolio and is grain of sand in a bucketful compared to the amount farm and pasture ground in the US.. This is bean counters doing bean counter things. These properties are LLCs owned by this holding company that’s under the umbrella of this corporation that is a subsidiary of Company X that’s owned by Corporation Y.

One property borders up to one of our family farms. It’s been bought and sold probably at least 10 times over the course of my life. I sold all the corn seed, 10% of the soybeans, and damn near 100% of the chemicals and fertilizer that went on it. I can say this they let their farm managers have free reign on what happens on the property, they spare no expense on fertility and irrigation, and take good care of the tenants on the properties that get share cropped/cash rented. A tract of one of the Louisiana properties actually sold a couple of years ago. The one I had the business on was for sell but the potential buyers backed out for whatever reason.