Bill Gates, the eccentric Microsoft co-founder who has no college degree but a lot of money -- and interest in current events -- is now the country’s largest private owner of farmland, and nobody seems to know why. According to The Land Report, which tracks statistics on major property ownership, Gates and his wife, Melinda, over the years have quietly purchased 242,000 acres of farmland, and an additional 27,000 acres of non-farmland, across 19 states.
