Rural Vermont Chairs the VT Farmland Access and Stewardship Working Group in the Farm to Plate Network and our next meeting is on Wednesday, January 20th, from 2-4pm.
At this meeting we will share local updates, and welcome some special guests from the National Family Farm Coalition, the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, and Action-Aid USA who will discus the growth and trends of corporate land grabs in the US and abroad, and the $100 million dollar investment the VT Pension Investment Committee has made in TIAA's global farmland subsidiary Nuveen.
Zoom Invite:
Topic: Farmland Access and Stewardship WG Meeting: Corporate Land Grabs
Time: Jan 20, 2021 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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Meeting ID: 898 6768 8355
Passcode: 271883
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Meeting ID: 898 6768 8355
Passcode: 271883
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More information and resources:
- New report about TIAA and Harvard by Rede Social and GRAIN on new findings of illegality
- Article about it on Bloomberg:
- Article about it by Chain Reaction:
- Earlier report about transitional corporations and land speculation in Brazil: https://www.social.org.br/index.php/pub/booklets-english/210-transnational-corporations-and-land-speculation-in-brazil.html
- Released last month by FOE and ActionAid:
Biggest Private Farmland Holders in the US:
AGRA Watch has begun a new research project to document the full scope of Gates Foundation/Microsoft/Gates family' growing dominance of global governance.
"The Land Report" has just announced that Bill & Melinda Gates are now the biggest private farmland owners in the US. The holdings have been amassed directly and through Cascade Investment LLC, the managers of Gates' personal wealth (not the foundation's endowment).
- https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/01/14/americas-biggest-owner-of-farmland-is-now-bill-gates-bezos-turner/
- https://agfundernews.com/bill-melinda-gates-revealed-as-largest-private-farmland-owners-in-us.html
The Gates’ own an estimated 242,000 acres of farmland as part of a broader 269,000-acre land portfolio across 19 states, with the largest holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres), and Arizona (25,750 acres).
A spokesperson for Cascade Investment, which is chaired and controlled by Bill Gates, declined to comment on specific land holdings to The Land Report, but told the magazine it is “very supportive of sustainable farming.”
Cascade Investment is a shareholder in plant-based protein companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, as well as agricultural equipment maker John Deere.