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North Dakota AG Is Probing Bill Gates’ Latest Purchase


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Bill Gates has been sweeping up farmland all throughout the Mid West and the South left and right but an attorney general in North Dakota has seen enough.

North Dakota State Attorney General Drew Wrigley is currently investigating an entity that is linked to Bill Gates.

The North Dakota’s Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Red River Trust after the trust gobbled up 2,100 acres of potato farmland in northern North Dakota

As most of you know Bill Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the United States and has already acquired over 270,000 acres of farmland.

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AG Week had more on the story:

The North Dakota Attorney General’s office is looking into a land transaction between a prominent Grafton, North Dakota, potato farming family and a trust associated with billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

In a letter dated June 21, 2022, and addressed to the Red River Trust, care of trustee Peter Headley, in the trust’s Lenexa, Kansas, office, and also at an office in Grafton, North Dakota, where Campbell Farms is headquartered and still operates, the attorney general’s office notified the trust that all corporations or limited liability companies are “prohibited from owning or leasing farmland or ranchland in the state of North Dakota,” and from “engaging in farming or ranching.”

“In addition, the law places certain limitations on the ability of trusts to own farmland or ranchland,” the letter said.

Attorney General Drew Wrigley was not immediately available for comment but said he could speak on the matter after a response period.

The Trust and Headley have 30 days to respond to Kerrie Helm, a paralegal in the attorney general’s Corporate Farming Enforcement Division.

The New York Post had these details to share:

An entity with ties to billionaire Bill Gates bought 2,100 acres of potato farmland in northern North Dakota — prompting the state’s top prosecutor to intervene after complaints from local residents.

Public records cited by AgWeek show that the Gates-linked Red River Trust bought the farmland from the owners of Campbell Farms, a potato farming group that is headquartered in Grafton, North Dakota, which is about 50 miles from the Canadian border.

North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring told KFYR that public reaction to the purchase has been largely negative.

“I’ve gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it’s not even from that neighborhood,” said Goehring.

“Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this.”

Gates, the billionaire tech mogul and philanthropist whose net worth was pegged by Bloomberg at $113 billion, has quietly amassed nearly 270,000 acres of farmland across the country, according to the Associated Press.



 

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