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Kiri Irving is making titles again, but this time it’s not about anything about basketball. Dallas Mavericks’s wounded All-Star took on Twitch, animal platform, mostly known for gamers to share some of its thoughts on all things, agricultural land and Bill Gates.
“I still think it’s weird that the Gates family, Bill Gates, owns a lot of Earth in North Dakota,” Irving said in a live video that is now spreading on YouTube and X.
“I think this is weird. He has the greater part of the water in the United States. I think it’s weird. Whatever it is.
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Irving’s comment lit a spark on social media, with some viewers rushing to check the claims of the NBA champion. One person even asked Grok – Ai Chatbot on Elon Musk – what was real and what wasn’t. “Gates owns ~ 270,000 acres of agricultural land (0.03% of the common agricultural land in the US), making it the largest private owner, but not a majority,” the chatbot replied. “He does not own most American water; the rights are bound by land and regulated, not dominated by any person.”
Another X user wrote:
“Kiri Irving makes sense – why is @billgates scolding the American agricultural lands and water? It’s not just” strange “; it’s a move of power. Controling food and water is not just an influence, it’s a throttle for the basic society. When a person holds these levers, it is a threat to our independence.”
So, how many land actually possesses Gates? According to the latest Land 100 report, Microsoft’s co -founder currently owns about 275,000 acres of agricultural land, distributed in at least 18 states. This lands it to number 43 on the list of the largest landowners in America -even in the top 10. While it is the largest owner of private agricultural land in the country, the idea that it owns a “majority” of everything is just incorrect. For context, the United States has over 900 million acres of agricultural land. Gates has approximately 0.03% of it.
Much of the dispute stems from a purchase in 2022 in North Dakota, where the River Trust – the gate -related formation – bought 2100 acres from Campbell Farms for $ 13.5 million. The locals were not excited, but the sale was legal and approved by the Prosecutor General of the State. That same year, Gates tried to clear the air during Reddit Amaa: “I own less than 1/4000 of the agricultural land in the US,” he writes. “I invested in these farms to make them more productive and to create more jobs. There is no grand scheme – in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”