|
Post by majorminor on Jun 22, 2022 11:18:33 GMT -5
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/billionaire-buys-large-portion-of-nd-land-prompts-letter-from-attorney-general/ar-AAYItdI?li=BBnbfcLBillionaire buys large portion of ND land, prompts letter from Attorney General PEMBINA COUNTY, N.D. (KFYR) - 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. Some reaction from the public has not been positive. “I’ve gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it’s not even from that neighborhood. Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this,” said Commissioner Goehring. The transfer of ownership to the trust breaks no North Dakota laws, but the buyers will need to prove it is not in violation of Corporate Farming Laws. Commissioner Goehring says there’s nothing illegal or unlawful about selling land to a billionaire, but many people feel they are being exploited by the ultra-rich who buy land in North Dakota but do not necessarily share the state’s values.
|
|
|
Post by howard lee on Jun 22, 2022 12:35:19 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Shannon on Jun 22, 2022 12:51:41 GMT -5
So is the problem that a trust (with ties to Bill Gates) bought the land?
What if Gates himself, as a private citizen, had bought it? Would there still be some issue?
I'm not arguing anything about it, I'm just not sure I get the problem here. Lands and farms are not my area of expertise.
|
|
|
Post by james on Jun 22, 2022 13:05:22 GMT -5
|
|
Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,904
|
Post by Dub on Jun 22, 2022 13:11:50 GMT -5
I'm guessing the issue is control of a huge piece of ND. I'm not familiar with farms in ND but I would expect to find that corporate farms are already huge owners of rural land. In this case, there is no huge agribusiness identified with the sale, just investment firms. There is no guarantee that the land will remain committed to agriculture. It could be parceled or rented out to automotive battery manufacturers or turned into huge developments to house people they don't like.
|
|
|
Post by billhammond on Jun 22, 2022 13:46:08 GMT -5
I'm guessing the issue is control of a huge piece of ND. I'm not familiar with farms in ND but I would expect to find that corporate farms are already huge owners of rural land. In this case, there is no huge agribusiness identified with the sale, just investment firms. There is no guarantee that the land will remain committed to agriculture. It could be parceled or rented out to automotive battery manufacturers or turned into huge developments to house people they don't like. Gee, if only we knew someone with a farming background who was also familiar with North Dakota to explain this ...
|
|
|
Post by TKennedy on Jun 22, 2022 14:08:23 GMT -5
Over the last 20 years all of the land around our cattle ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills has been bought up by wealthy out staters. On the south is Ted Turner who raises Buffalo and all other sides are owned by the Mormon Church.
They run their own cattle on the land with local hired help. I think the reaction was mixed but last I heard they paid good wages and treated their employees well.
|
|
|
Post by david on Jun 22, 2022 14:22:02 GMT -5
Something similar occurred in Washington State a few years ago. Here is part of a 2019 article from www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/wall-street-spends-millions-to-buy-up-washington-state-water/#:~:text=WINTHROP%2C%20Okanogan%20County%20%E2%80%94%20Follow%20the,venture%20on%20the%20state's%20water.: "Wall Street spends millions to buy up Washington state water Oct. 27, 2019 at 6:00 am Updated Nov. 1, 2019 at 6:48 pm Evan Bush By Evan Bush Seattle Times staff reporter WINTHROP, Okanogan County — Follow the water and you’ll find the money. That’s how it often works in the dusty rural corners of Washington, where a Wall Street-backed firm is staking an ambitious venture on the state’s water. Crown Columbia Water Resources since 2017 has targeted the water rights of farms on tributaries of the mighty Columbia River. This March, the company sealed a $340,000 deal for Douglas County water. The same day, it paid $1.69 million for a farming partnership’s water in Columbia County. Two months later, the company spent nearly $1.61 million near Walla Walla. Piece by piece, the company’s lawyer, Mark Peterson, is constructing a portfolio to span the state, building out a plan he hopes will untangle the arcane world of water rights, and thrust it into a 21st-century free market. Worldwide, as temperatures rise and aquifers dry, investors are increasingly bullish on water, and buying vineyards, farms and ranches for what’s underneath or flowing through."
|
|
|
Post by dradtke on Jun 22, 2022 14:25:46 GMT -5
I'm guessing the issue is control of a huge piece of ND. I'm not familiar with farms in ND but I would expect to find that corporate farms are already huge owners of rural land. In this case, there is no huge agribusiness identified with the sale, just investment firms. There is no guarantee that the land will remain committed to agriculture. It could be parceled or rented out to automotive battery manufacturers or turned into huge developments to house people they don't like. Gee, if only we knew someone with a farming background who was also familiar with North Dakota to explain this ... I tried calling him but he's apparently moved to Hawaii after selling off a bunch of land.
|
|
|
Post by billhammond on Jun 22, 2022 14:46:02 GMT -5
I tried calling him but he's apparently moved to Hawaii after selling off a bunch of land. Next on Gates' sinister target list: hostile takeover of the Hobo Haus.
|
|
|
Post by billhammond on Jun 22, 2022 15:50:56 GMT -5
Opinion by Jenny Schlecht Agweek magazine
Farmland changes hands all the time. Not every piece every day, obviously, but somewhere, many days, farmland is changing hands.
And we don't write about every transaction in our area, or really, hardly any of them.
That brought up a question in the minds of some of our Agweek readers and AgweekTV viewers: Why did we report on a Bill Gates-associated company buying North Dakota farmland from Campbell Farms?
If you haven't read the piece, reported by Mikkel Pates, here are the basics: Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda have invested in farmland all over the country and are believed to be among the largest, if not the largest, owners of farmland in the U.S. The land is owned through entities associated with them, making some of the land transactions a bit tangled. Mikkel followed the trail and found that some land owned by Campbell Farms in North Dakota was moved to a trust associated with the Gateses.
The question of why that matters to Agweek's audience gets at the heart of exercises completed in Journalism 101 classes. What is newsworthy? What's not? And how do you tell the difference
Here are three reasons why we reported on this situation and why we would report on similar situations in the future:
Prominence One of the determinants of whether something is newsworthy revolves around whether the people involved are prominent. In this case, both sides of the transaction qualify. Gates is a well-known figure worldwide, and what he does is news.
The Campbells are not worldwide celebrities, but that does not mean they are not prominent. As Mikkel's reporting explained, Tom Campbell has been a well-known state lawmaker and has run for statewide office in North Dakota. The Campbell family is well known in agriculture circles as well. They are certainly prominent people in upper Midwest agriculture.
I grew up in Montana, and Ted Turner's purchases of ranchland there and elsewhere were — and continue to be — a topic of conversation and news. This is no different than that.
Unusual The old adage goes something like this: If a dog bites a man it's not news, but reverse the situation, and you've got an unusual situation that people may want — or in some cases need — to know about.
This situation is unusual, because while Gates' businesses have been buying land, it wasn't known publicly before this that he owned any in North Dakota. Plus, having a person prominent worldwide buy anything in North Dakota would be considered unusual and thus potentially newsworthy.
Impact The issue of impact is the big one for me and for many journalists. Does this affect our audience? Will it or could it have an impact on their lives? There certainly will be people who say this doesn't impact anyone other than the buyer and seller. And they are welcome to that opinion. But we balanced the potential impact this could have on communities, states and agriculture and determined there is an impact.
First, communities have a vested interest in knowing who owns what land. If there is a noxious weed problem in a field and it's going to spread to the next field, someone needs to talk to that owner, whether it's an absentee owner or not. That's just one example. But property ownership is public record for a reason.
Second, North Dakota has an anti-corporate farming law that many people believe keeps large entities from owning farmland and keeps farmland in the control of family farms. This case clearly shows there are workarounds unknown to many people.
Third, who owns the land does impact people around the land. It's a free country, and you can sell to anyone you want. But that doesn't mean that your decision doesn't impact the people around you for good or bad. There are people who are very suspicious of Bill Gates. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I'm going to leave that one alone. But I do live in a small community, and I know the concerns people often have about who is going to buy which farm and what that might mean for community involvement, land utilization and more. A local farmer buying land to expand, a beginning farmer buying an initial parcel to get started, and famous outside investors buying a farm they'll never visit and may not care about in a community they aren't invested in all have different impacts on the community and its future.
We will continue to report news that impacts our rural and agricultural communities, even when some people think it's none of our business. The journalist's job is to be a watchdog, not a lapdog, and we'll continue to serve as watchdogs for the ag industry and rural people. I welcome reader questions and comments about this or any other item we report.
Jenny Schlecht is Agweek's editor. She lives on a farm and ranch in Medina, North Dakota, with her husband and two daughters.
|
|
|
Post by jdd2 on Jun 22, 2022 20:10:16 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Jun 22, 2022 21:20:02 GMT -5
I don't know what's up, but I looked it up and it isn't a large purchase, 2,100 acres. By itself, that would be a nice-sized, but certainly not large, valley farm for a single family. The Campbells (the family corp Gates purchased the land from) farmed maybe 30 miles west of me and in their hayday farmed around 15,000 acres (when I last paid attention). When I was paying attention, theirs was the largest operation I was aware of (they farmed about 30 miles west of me). As I said, a purchase of 2,000 acres of farmland, of and by itself, is not big deal. That is a small purchase by both ND standards and Bill Gates standards. A 2,000 acre operation is on the smaller end of what would now be considered viable for a small grains, corn, and bean operation. (Characters like the Offutts buy and sell in 10,000 acre increments).
It's news because it's Bill Gates, and it does appear to be in violation of ND regulations governing corporate farm ownership (families that farm, and only families that farm, can organize as a corporation for tax purposes, which is darn handy (the only way to go, really) if there are multiple family members involved in an operation, i.e. parents and a couple kids w/families.
We'll see.
Farmland always generates speculative interest in uncertain economic times as an income-producing hedge against inflation and general going to hellishness. Good ND farmland is priced about half that of prime Illinois farmland, and the income generated gap isn't nearly what it used to be (certainly not half). I'm sure ND land looks like a darn good investment to outsiders.
So it will be interesting to see what results from this purchase. The last thing ND wants is out of state funds and limited partnerships buying up farmland as a investment (they then they hire a manager hire a crew and lease a bunch of equipment and run the operation to generate (hopefully) some revenue during the holding period of the investment).
At least, I think that is the last thing ND wants. Who knows. Outside money is good money and high land values are high land values (great if you own and aren't planning of buying).
My farm is in MN. I hope they find oil on it or need to put a pipeline or wind turbine through it or on it. Better yet, maybe Bill Gates will call.
|
|
|
Post by John B on Jun 22, 2022 22:41:03 GMT -5
Who says he's planning on farming it?
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Jun 22, 2022 22:45:00 GMT -5
www.agweek.com/business/entity-linked-to-billionaire-bill-gates-pays-13-5-million-for-campbell-farms-north-dakota-farmland#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20An%20entity%20associated%20with%20Bill%20Gates%2C%20the,group%20headquarted%20in%20Grafton%2C%20North%20Dakota%2C%20last%20November. Repeat, a land sale of 2,100 acres is not an unusually large land sale, not by any means, it is a very typically farmland sale. Not huge or unusual by means. Not at all. The size of the land purchase is being media-hyped. Given the players, Campbell and Gates foundation, it's peanuts, small potatoes, one step beyond hobby farm. The Campbells got a good price, however, 6 grand an acre is getting close to prime Iowa prices. Gates (and his foundation) has a lot of money to invest. It can be hard to find places to put all that money. Two or three hundred thousand acres is just a nice little bit of diversification on the part of the Trusts. Harvard and the Catholic Church probably have some nice chunks of farmland as well. (I know the Church does. If there is a bachelor farmer, or one worried about the hereafter more than his rotten kids, the local priest and the Church is all over him on his final days like flies on a dead cat. Amazing to see in action.)
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Jun 22, 2022 22:50:08 GMT -5
I don't think anyone has said what the trust plans are, but it is developed prime farmland, odds are they will rent it/lease it and keep it producing income. I suppose it could be turned into a wildlife preserve or some type of prairieland venture. I don't expect the Trust needs income, just protect and safeguard assets. Buffalo?
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Jun 22, 2022 22:52:30 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by jdd2 on Jun 23, 2022 0:28:57 GMT -5
A 15,000 acre 'family' farm. Or a little over 23 square miles.
How many people would you think the family corporation employs?
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jun 23, 2022 3:53:27 GMT -5
I understand that the Family owns a lot of New Jersey but they don't farm it.
|
|
|
Post by theevan on Jun 23, 2022 4:29:23 GMT -5
Gates is the largest private landowner in Louisiana.
On edit, Roy O Martin is the largest landowner in Louisiana and that is Timberland. But Bill Gates is the largest farm land owner in the state
|
|