America’s richest investors are buying enormous amounts of farmland, transforming agricultural property into an increasingly valuable alternative asset while creating new concerns that working farmers—especially younger ones—may be unable to compete for land they need to build or expand their businesses.
The trend has attracted attention partly because of high-profile billionaires who have embraced farming and ranching. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai, Hawaii, a property valued at roughly $300 million and spanning about 4,000 acres, where he has been raising wagyu and angus cattle. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian has also shared details of his family farm in Jupiter, Florida, including banana plants, herbs and beehives.
But those properties are small compared with some of America’s biggest private landholdings. According to data, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates owns about 275,000 acres, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos controls roughly 462,000 acres. Billionaire sports owner Stan Kroenke holds an estimated 2.7 million acres, placing him among the country’s largest landowners.
The appeal of farmland goes well beyond lifestyle. Agricultural land has developed into an estimated $4.3 trillion asset class, according to Steve Bruere, president of agricultural real-estate company Peoples Company. Investors increasingly view farmland as a way to diversify their portfolios, protect wealth from inflation and reduce exposure to the volatility of stocks and other financial assets.
Farmland’s scarcity strengthens that investment case. Unlike many assets, the supply of productive agricultural land is limited. As populations grow and food demand increases, investors believe high-quality farmland could become increasingly valuable. U.S. farm real-estate values averaged approximately $4,350 per acre last year, representing a 4.3% annual increase, according to Agriculture Department data.
Investor interest accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, when wealthy individuals and institutions began searching for alternative assets that could offer stability during periods of economic uncertainty. Farmland increasingly came to resemble gold or real estate: a tangible asset that could appreciate while potentially generating income through agriculture.
More recently, the land rush has received another boost from technology. Companies building massive AI data centers are competing for large parcels of land, including agricultural properties. This adds another source of demand at a moment when investors, developers and farmers are already competing for a finite resource.
For working farmers, that competition can create serious difficulties.
Erin Foster West of the National Young Farmers Coalition saide that rising prices make it especially hard for beginning farmers attempting to purchase their first property and for established farmers seeking additional acreage. Wealthy investors can often pay more than agricultural operators can justify based solely on the income generated by farming.
Nearly 40% of U.S. farmland is already rented to farmers and agricultural operators. Leasing can help younger farmers enter the business without the enormous expense of purchasing land, and agricultural rents have recently increased much more slowly than land values. But renting also creates disadvantages.
Farmers who do not own their property may be reluctant to make expensive long-term improvements such as soil restoration, irrigation infrastructure or produce-processing facilities. Ownership also provides collateral that can help farmers obtain business loans, finance education for their children or accumulate wealth for retirement.
The concern, therefore, is not simply that billionaires own farms. The deeper issue is whether farmland increasingly becomes a financial asset whose price is determined by wealthy investors rather than by the economic value of actually producing food.
For investors, farmland offers scarcity, inflation protection, potential appreciation and even recreational benefits. For farmers, however, the same investment boom can make the fundamental resource required for their profession increasingly unaffordable.
As farmland attracts billionaires, investment funds and technology companies, the United States faces a growing question over who will ultimately control its agricultural landscape. If prices continue climbing faster than farm incomes, America could increasingly become a country where farmers work the land—but wealthy investors own it.
