Bill Gates is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the United States.
Some news outlets have reported that Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland, an Associated Press investigation found that is not the case. Gates has acquired nearly 270,000 acres across the country but it’s just a fraction of the nearly 900 million total farm acres in America.
Land is one of the factors of production. In Economics, factors of production are basically the ingredients that go into making goods and services. There are four main factors of production:
- Land. This refers to any natural resource used in production. So it’s not just dirt – it also includes things like minerals, oil, water, and even forests.
- Labor. This is the human effort that goes into making things. Everyone from factory workers to accountants to teachers is contributing labor.
- Capital. This refers to the physical goods and buildings used to create other goods and services. So factories, machines, computers, and even things like delivery trucks are all capital.
- Entrepreneurship. This is the human creativity and risk-taking that brings the other three factors together to make a new product or service.
By combining these four factors, businesses can produce the things we all use every day. Land provides the raw materials, labor provides the effort, capital provides the tools, and entrepreneurship brings the vision and takes the chances to make it all happen.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-harvests-113-million-160013666.html
