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In April 2022, researchers warned about the potential risk of a global food shortage, spurred on in part by Russia's ongoing attacks on Ukraine. While there are currently no nationwide food shortages in the United States, nor widespread disruptions in the supply chain, the potential of such shortages caused many people to feel that their food security was suddenly uncertain. In the wake of this uncertainty, unfounded rumors began to spread that attempted to lay the blame for any coming food shortages on nefarious forces. One such rumor claimed that there had been an unusual number of fires at food processing facilities in 2022. The explanation offered by conspiracy theorists for this untrue claim was that these fires were being intentionally set in order to create a food crisis. In reality, the number of fires was not extraordinary, the causes of the fires were not unusual, and the damage caused by the fires was minimal. As unfounded rumors related to the cause of a yet-to-happen food crisis circulated online, many people started to point fingers at a favorite target of conspiracy theorists, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. One of the most prevalent claims related to Gates and the potential for food shortages is that the billionaire owns a suspicious amount of farmland in the United States. On social media, we found people claiming, for example, that Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland -- 80%, they claimed -- and that Gates is trying to buy up all of the farmland. These claims are not true. Gates does not own anywhere close to the majority of America's farmland. Gates does own a lot of farmland. In fact, he reportedly owns more farmland than any other individual in America. According to 2021 article from the Land Report, a magazine about land ownership, Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland. While this is certainly a lot of acreage, it represents less than 1% of all the farmland in the United States. According to a 2021 report from the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Agriculture Statistics Service, there are 895,300,000 acres of farmland in the United States. Gates' 242,000 acres amounts to about 0.03% of the total. To put that into perspective, if you put all of the land that Gates owns into one place (his holdings are spread throughout the country), you'd cover an area about a quarter the size of Rhode Island. While viral conspiracy theories baselessly conjecture that Gates is buying up farmland in order to starve Americans for some unknown reason, there's likely a simpler explanation: Gates makes money off this land. Gates started purchasing farmland circa 2013 through his investment group, Cascade Investments. Agfundernews.com, a website about agricultural investments, reported in 2021 that Gates' investments were part of a broader trend that started after the financial crisis of 2008, as investors looked for reliable returns. While many have also speculated that Gates' land purchases were in some way related to his efforts to curb climate change, Gates has said that the two are unrelated. Gates said during a Reddit AMA: During times of uncertainty, people often look for someone to blame, and peddlers of misinformation are quick to tell others at whom they should be pointing their fingers. Oftentimes, those fingers get pointed at Gates. During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine-hesitant Americans were inundated with false rumors claiming that Gates was putting microchips into vaccines, that he was working on a mind-altering vaccine, that Gates had input tracking devices into vaccines, and that he once called for vaccinations as a way to depopulate the planet. These rumors, like the present rumor about Gates buying up the majority of farmland in the United States for nefarious purposes, are all false.
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