Forget Bill Gates. The Biggest Land Grab in America Belongs to Silent Stan.
Forget Bill Gates. The Biggest Land Grab in America Belongs to “Silent Stan.”
Who Gets a Shot at Farming?
Jan 22, 2026
For years, Bill Gates has been the name people bring up when they talk about billionaire farmland owners.
But now Stan Kroenke tops the list, with nearly 10 times more land than Gates.
“Silent Stan” Kroenke is famously reclusive. He owns the Los Angeles Rams and built his fortune in real estate, developing shopping centers, many anchored by Walmart. He is also married to a Walmart heiress.
The Land Report ranks Kroenke as the largest private landowner in America, with more than 2.7 million acres, after a reported purchase of nearly a million acres of New Mexico ranchland in December 2025.
To put this in perspective, Bill Gates owns about 275,000 acres total, and roughly 250,000 of that is farm ground.
These are big numbers. But the real question is not who is winning billionaire farmland Monopoly. It is this:
What Happens When the People Buying Land Are Not the People Farming It?
When land ownership concentrates into fewer hands, it gets priced for investors, not farmers.
Farmers bid based on what land can earn. Investors can bid based on what land can store: portfolio value, tax strategy, and long term appreciation, even if the farm income does not pencil out. That disconnect pushes prices beyond what working farms can support.
That raises barriers for beginning farmers. If you do not already own land, it gets harder to get started because prices exceed what farming can pay.
It also blocks expansion for working farms. Land is how you scale your operation, add family members, spread fixed costs, and survive bad years. When land is priced for wealth, not farm income, growth becomes a gamble.
So more farmers rent. Renting is not new, but it becomes the default when ownership is out of reach. And it comes with less security. You can improve a place for years and still lose it.
That uncertainty discourages long term investments in soil health, water, fencing, perennials, and infrastructure. Why sink money into improvements when you cannot be sure you will be farming that land next year, or five years from now?
Over time, power shifts to landlords and outside owners. Farmers have less leverage, decisions move away from the community, and more money leaves rural economies.
Beginning farmers feel this first, and it is not subtle. Erin Foster West of the National Young Farmers Coalition said it clearly:
“It makes it much harder for farmers to compete, especially beginning farmers who are maybe trying to acquire their first farm, or even an existing farmer who might want to grow and expand,” Foster West told Fortune.
The bottom line is that when fewer farmers can own land, fewer farmers can stay independent. That makes the food system less secure for everyone.
Who Gets to Farm?
This is not just about one or two billionaires. It is about whether farming stays something people can enter and build a life in, or whether it becomes something you do only if you inherit land or can rent it from someone who did.
If we want farmers on the land, we need more paths to ownership, fewer incentives that reward land speculation, and more transparency about who is buying what. That can look like farmer friendly financing for first time buyers, better public reporting on major land deals, and closing loopholes that make land speculation more profitable than production.
When land is bought to build wealth instead of grow food, it is a risky way to run a food system.