Gates Uses Shell Companies to Quietly Accumulate $113 Million Nebraska Farmland Portfolio
A January 2024 investigation by The Guardian and Floodlight News revealed that entities connected to Bill Gates's Cascade Investment had used a network of limited liability companies — including Cottonwood Ag Management — to quietly purchase approximately 20,588 acres of Nebraska farmland valued at roughly $113 million, without disclosing the beneficial owner to local sellers or county officials. The acquisitions were part of Gates's wider strategy to become the largest private farmland owner in the United States, with holdings exceeding 269,000 acres across 18 states, managed through Cottonwood Ag Management and its parent Leading Harvest, which develops regenerative agriculture certification standards.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/30/bill-gates-farmland-nebraska-shell-companies
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Related Accomplishments
2024
Breakthrough Energy Ventures Raises $839 Million Fund III with Food and Agriculture Focus
Breakthrough Energy Ventures closed its third fund at $839 million, with food and agriculture as one of five core investment sectors alongside power, transportation, manufacturing, and buildings. The fund holds stakes in approximately 20 agricultural companies and requires each portfolio company to demonstrate a credible pathway to avoiding at least 500 million tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually by 2050. The 20-year investment horizon is deliberately longer than standard venture capital to reflect the time required to change biological and physical infrastructure at scale.
June 2023
Backed UPSIDE Foods — first USDA-approved cultivated chicken receives regulatory green light
Gates-backed UPSIDE Foods (originally Memphis Meats) became one of the first two companies to receive USDA authorization to sell cultivated — or lab-grown — chicken in the United States in June 2023. Gates had invested in Memphis Meats as early as 2016 and participated in the company's $400 million Series C funding round. UPSIDE Foods grows real animal muscle tissue from cells in bioreactors, requiring no slaughter and dramatically fewer land, water, and feed inputs than conventional poultry production. Gates has cited cultivated meat as one of the most promising technologies for reducing livestock agriculture's 14.5% share of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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