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b'Tech magnate Bill Gates is now the biggest owner of farmland in the united states. Bill Gates and his wife Melinda own a staggering 242,000 acres across 18 states.\\xa0\\n\\nThis aligns closely with Gates\\u2019 recent agricultural innovations projects. This includes Gates Ag One, which focuses on research to help "smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable."\\n\\nHere\\u2019s part of an interview Bill Gates on the future of his farming initiatives.\\n\\nBG: \\u201cWe\'ve been in a lot of funding the research centers that come up with the better wheat seeds corn seeds rice seeds. That\'s kind of a global public good.\\n\\nNo single country gets all the benefit. All. Countries do. And yet it\'s often underfunded. Still the scientists are making seeds that deal with less water, deal with heat, yield more per acre. And those are getting out slowly but surely to the farmers employers.\\n\\nFor Africa in particular we\'re predicting a 50 percent increase in productivity. That would mean that Africa instead of buying 50 billion dollars of food like it does today, will net be self-sufficient able to grow as much food as people eat on the continent of Africa.\\n\\nIt\'s kind of ironic that the continent where over 60 percent of the people are farmers is buying food from the United States where less than 2 percent of the people are farmers. They\'re spending their money to have food be imported. And yet they have lots of land, lots of labor. If we can just get that productivity to be better than that, they won\'t be spending their money on food from other countries.\\u201d\\n\\nAre you looking for more quality B2B content like this? Be sure to subscribe to our industry publications at marketscale.com\\n\\n--\\n\\n*Brief portions of Bill Gates\\u2019 statement were edited for clarity.\\n\\n*Contributions to this content were made by Bloomberg.'