North Dakota AG Asks Trust Linked to Bill Gates to Justify Land Buy: ‘People Are… Just Livid About This’

Kipp JonesJun 22nd, 2022, 4:08 pm
 

The North Dakota Attorney General’s office has asked a trust reportedly linked to billionaire Bill Gates to justify a recent purchase of farmland in the state.

KFYR in Bismarck, North Dakota reported Red River Trust purchased land in Pembina County that borders Canada to the north and Minnesota to the east.

Reporter Christa Kiedrowski connected the firm to Gates. She wrote:

A large land sale completed in northeast North Dakota that was confirmed by North Dakota Ag Commissioner Doug Goehring is creating controversy. It’s not the big price tag that is being questioned but who was involved in the transaction. A trust that has ties to Bill Gates acquired six parcels of land in Pembina County.

Tuesday, the office of the Attorney General sent out a letter asking the Red River Trust to confirm how the company plans to use the land and if it meets any of the exceptions to the North Dakota Corporate Farming Laws.

In the letter from Attorney General Phil Wrigley to Red River Trust, the state’s top law enforcement officer asked the trust to confirm how it intends to use the land.

“In North Dakota, under N.D.C.C. ch. 10-06.1, all corporations or limited liability companies (LLC) are prohibited from owning or leasing farmland or ranchland, and from engaging in farming or ranching,” Wrigley wrote. “In addition, the law places certain limitations on the ability of trusts to own farmland or ranchland.”

North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring told KFYR the sale of land has people across the state “livid.”

“I’ve gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it’s not even from that neighborhood,” Goehring said. “Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this.”

It is not clear exactly how much land Red River Trust bought.

Claims have circulated in recent years Gates owns the majority of the country’s farmland. The Associated Press debunked the claim in a fact check last month. The AP did report the tech billionaire is the single largest owner of farmland in the U.S. The AP reported:

The billionaire tech mogul and philanthropist has quietly amassed nearly 270,000 acres of farmland across the country, but that’s still a relatively small slice of the nation’s nearly 900 million total farm acres.

…

The Microsoft co-founder is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the country with some 269,000 acres across dozens of states, according to last year’s edition of the Land Report 100, an annual survey of the nation’s largest landowners.

Gates confirmed an investment group buys land on his behalf for the purpose of developing seeds and biofuel. His purchases have become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories.

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