by Dr. Mercola, The Waking Times:
Unbeknown to most, Bill Gates has been buying up farmland across the U.S. through various subsidiary companies. At present, he owns about 242,000 acres of farmland, plus another 27,000 acres of nonagricultural land.
While many media outlets claim this makes Gates the biggest farmland owner in the U.S.,1 that may be an exaggeration, seeing how there are at least 50 other families that own far greater landmasses, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.2 According to a USA Today investigation3 published in November 2019, Bezos owns a respectable 420,000 acres, most of it located in Texas.
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Is Bill Gates Too Powerful?
Either way, Gates certainly owns a sizeable chunk of U.S. farmland, which places him, yet again, in a position to have a significant impact on the direction of American agriculture and food production. In the video above, Russell Brand reviews some of these controversies.
Were Gates a proponent of organics, his land ownership would probably be seen as a good thing, but he’s anything but. On the contrary, not only is he a longtime proponent of GMOs and toxic agricultural chemicals, he’s also gone on record urging Western nations to switch to 100% synthetic lab-grown imitation beef, and has railed against legislative attempts to make sure fake meats are properly labeled, since that will slow down public acceptance.4
He’s also in favor of transitioning to other fake and unnatural food sources, such as a microbe found in a Yellowstone geyser. Rich in protein, this microbe can “be turned into a variety of foods with a small carbon footprint,” Gates says.5 Not surprisingly, Gates is financially invested in many of his proposed “solutions” to the world’s problems, be it hunger, disease, viral pandemics or climate change.
As noted in a long and detailed article by The Defender about several of Gates’ more questionable endeavors:6
“Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.
So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.”
Master and Commander of Failed Agriculture
The Defender goes on to detail Gates’ “long-term strategy of mastery over agriculture and food production globally,” starting with his support of GMOs in 1994. Ever since that time, Gates’ “philanthropic” approaches to hunger and food production have been built around his technology, chemical, pharmaceutical and oil industry partners, thereby ensuring that for every failed rescue venture, he gets richer nonetheless.
“As with Gates’ African vaccine enterprise, there was neither internal evaluation nor public accountability,” The Defender writes.7 “The 2020 study8 ‘False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)’ is the report card on the Gates’ cartel’s 14-year effort.
The investigation concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 18 countries that Gates targeted. Rural poverty has metastasized dramatically …
Under Gates’ plantation system, Africa’s rural populations have become slaves on their own land to a tyrannical serfdom of high-tech inputs, mechanization, rigid schedules, burdensome conditionalities, credits and subsidies … The only entities benefiting from Gates’ program are his international corporate partners.”
Gates Is a Corporate Globalist, Not a Philanthropist
AGRA was launched in 2006 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. However, while touting a “green revolution” approach to ease hunger in Africa, it’s hard to imagine a less sustainable or destructive solution. As reported in “False Promises”:9
“[AGRA] promised to double the agricultural yields and incomes of 30 million small-scale food producer households by 2020, thus halving both hunger and poverty in the focus countries. To achieve these goals, AGRA received over one billion U.S. dollars — mainly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but also from governments like the U.S., U.K. and Germany.
The study issues AGRA a decidedly negative report card: yield increases for key staple crops in the years before AGRA were just as low as during AGRA. Instead of halving hunger, the situation in the 13 focus countries has worsened since AGRA was launched …
AGRA in fact harms small-scale food producers, for example by subjecting them to high levels of debt. In Zambia and Tanzania, small-scale food producers were unable to repay the loans for fertilizer and hybrid seeds after the first harvest.
AGRA projects also restrict the freedom of choice for small-scale food producers to decide for themselves what they want to grow. This has dramatic effects on crop diversity. AGRA’s focus is on the one-sided cultivation of maize. Traditional climate-resistant and nutrient-rich crops have thus declined …
Moreover, AGRA lobbies governments on behalf of agricultural corporations to pass legislation that will benefit fertilizer producers and seed companies instead of strengthening small-scale food production and alternative structures.”
Rescue Technologies That Aren’t
It’s these kinds of self-serving endeavors that have earned Gates the unofficial title of the most dangerous philanthropist in the world. As noted by AGRA Watch,10 Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., and others, Gates’ philanthropy creates several new problems for each one he promises to solve, and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism.”
As noted in the AGRA Watch article, “Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity,” philanthrocapitalists:11
“… often expect financial returns or secondary benefits over the long term from their investments in social programs. Philanthropy becomes another part of the engine of profit and corporate control. The Gates Foundation’s strategy for ‘development’ actually promotes neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalization.”
In the featured video, Brand also quotes Shiva, co-founder of Regeneration International, who had the following to say about Gates’ efforts to improve farming in India:
“When Bill Gates forced his ‘rescue’ technologies on Indian farmers, the only one to benefit was Gates and his multinational partners. He gave money to the government and a company called Digital Green, and made extravagant promises to digitally transform Indian agriculture.
Then, with the cooperation of his purchased government officials, Gates put cameras and electronic sensors in the homes and fields of Indian farmers. He used their cell phones, which he gave them for free, and his fiber optic and 5G installations, which he persuaded the Indian Telecom Company to finance — to catalogue, study and steal farmers’ crop data, indigenous practices and agricultural knowledge for free.
Then he sold it back to them as new data. Instead of digitally transforming farms as he promised, he transformed Indian farmers into digital information. He privatized their seeds and harvested the work of the public system.
He ripped out their knowledge assets and heirloom genetics, and installed GMO seeds and other ridiculous practices. His clear agenda was to drive small farmers from the land and eventually mechanize and privatize food production.”
Sustainability and Globalism Are at Odds
Again and again, Gates’ globalist approach to farming has had devastating consequences for food and environmental sustainability in general and local food security in particular. India and Africa are just two of the most obvious examples. It just doesn’t work. It is profitable for Gates and his corporate allies, though, and furthers the technocratic plan to control the world by owning all the world’s resources.
