Who’s Really Behind The War On Meat? How Bill Gates Is Quietly Transforming America’s Food Industry From Within

When most people hear the name Bill Gates, the first thing that comes to mind is his work at Microsoft, or his climate change and vaccine initiatives. But it’s his investment in a different field that’s now turning heads: Agriculture.

Last year, it was revealed that Bill Gates had become the single largest farmland owner in America. While quietly amassing more American farmland than any other person on Earth, Gates has also positioned himself as one of the leading voices for “synthetic meat” and other meat alternatives — claiming they’re imperative in the fight against climate change. 

Here’s the story of what Bill Gates is doing with all that farmland, and how he’s waging a war on meat to line his own pockets — all under the guise of climate activism. 

All The Land Money Can Buy

As of last year, Bill Gates owned roughly a quarter million acres of U.S. farmland — nearly the size of Hong Kong. There are 70,000 acres in Louisiana for corn, cotton, and rice and 20,000 acres in Nebraska for soybeans. One of his potato farms is so big you can literally see it from space. Gates’ farmland stretches across 19 states — from North Carolina to Michigan to California — and is valued at nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. 

For years, Gates and his ex-wife Melinda used a series of shell companies to hide their land purchases. 

In 2018, for example, a company called Angelina Agriculture purchased approximately $171 million worth of farmland in Washington state. On the surface, Angelina was a small company based in a Louisiana town with 462 people. It had two employees. But according to records, the business was actually under the umbrella of a group called Cascade Investment — a private investment firm controlled by Bill Gates. 

Gates is no stranger to agriculture; in the past, his foundation invested tens of millions of dollars into GMO technology. Those transactions included a $27.6 million investment in Monsanto — the agricultural company that would later be forced to pay out over $11 billion in settlements after it was found that some of its products caused cancer. 

But Gates’ transition from simply investing in farming technology to becoming the leading owner of farmland itself is even more noteworthy when coupled with his shifting stance on meat.

The New War On Meat

As Gates was amassing swaths of farmland, the billionaire also emerged as one of the world’s most prominent and vociferous voices for synthetic meat and other plant-based alternatives. According to him, the transition away from meat must take place swiftly in order to save the planet from climate change. 

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef,” Gates said during a conversation with MIT’s Technology Review.

It’s so important, he says, that government coercion could be necessary to catalyze the shift. “You can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand,” he added bluntly. 

In a separate interview with CBS, Gates elaborated: “Unless we can make the cow zero emission, which I’m not sure we can, we do need to get rid of those emissions. It’s not gonna happen overnight. The scale-up and the innovation still required there is quite large.”

If it were up to Bill Gates, the world would abandon meat for synthetic and plant-based alternatives.

But how do you make synthetic meat? And what goes into plant-based alternatives?

Well, it just so happens that “plant-based” meat is typically created with a variety of lentils, potatoes, pea proteins, soy and wheat — all things grown on farmland owned by Gates. Over the last five years, Gates has also invested tens of millions of dollars into leading plant-based meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. 

He is also among the single largest investors in “synthetic” or lab-grown meat, pouring tens of millions more into companies like Memphis Meats.

Shifting The Narrative

At the moment, the biggest problem standing in the way of a meatless world is the question of how exactly you get people to leave meat behind. And thanks to Gates, we now have an answer to that question: You convince the world that eliminating meat is necessary for fighting climate change. 

While Gates initially argued that the shift away from traditional meat was imperative due to population growth, his new message centers on environmental activism. 

Over the last five years, climate activists — with Gates at the forefront — increasingly began claiming the meat industry posed an existential threat to the planet, and that our reliance on cows for food was accelerating climate change. 

Waging a war on meat was necessary to save the environment. 

In 2019, for example, Gates wrote in his annual letter to friends and followers that the world must cut back on meat because cows “give off methane when they belch and pass gas. (A personal surprise for me: I never thought I’d be writing seriously

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