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Comment by tidepod12 | Hacker News Reader

Here is another article that isn't just about farmland, but about land ownership in general: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people...

Of note, the Gates don't even appear on this list. At first I thought it's because OP is only talking about farmland, but in the USA Today article the Simplot family apparently owns more than 400k acres for potato farming in Idaho, but doesn't even appear in the OP. I'm not sure what to make of the discrepancy.

Also for the sake of comparison, 240k acres is a good amount, but (as another commenter mentioned), it's also not. There are some cattle ranches larger than that. And for an example of non farm/ranch use, Bezos apparently owns over 400,000 acres in West Texas to be used for the Blue Origin launch facilities.

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You might be asking yourself "Why do billionaires own farm land?"

The answer is REAL simple. Taxes. Farmers get HUGE tax benefits that end up being particularly beneficial to the wealthy. Losses on farms translates into gigantic tax savings for billionaires.

How do I know this? My small family farm of 40 acres had major benefits to my fairly wealthy parents. There were many years they didn't pay taxes as a result of the farm.

So blame the lawmakers? Why vilify farmers for taking advantage of a tax code they didn't write? Every other industry does this, so why wouldn't people in agriculture?

Where's the vilification?

The biggest land owners in the US own forest land, where there is no agriculture (and for good reason). The land is owned as investment and for the possible resource exploitation, like oil extraction or logging, for example.

Logging is agriculture. This is why the US Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture.

Logging is considered an extractive industry.

The ranches that large tend to be out West where land is less productive for cows, you may need 10 or more acres per cow because of the brutal winters and arid climate. Whereas in say, East Texas you probably only need 1 or 2 acres per cow.

The cattle ranches may be counting differently; they own a few hundred acres outright but then have grazing rights on federal land that might make the "ranch area" quite large, but without full ownership of most of it.

I think this is discussing private ownership versus corporate.

EDIT: I'm less sure about this now, might just refer to government versus non government?

Don't a lot of these lists allow people to pay certain amount to be taken off the list and remain anonymous?

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