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Now that Bill Gates is the top private owner of U.S. farmland, with 242 thousand acres across 18 states, Russell Brand wants to know: Why has Bill Gates become a “Tech Old MacDonald?” Is he simply trying to help people? Or could there be another explanation?
Even more to the point, Brand asks: Should we be worried?
Possibly — given that the amount of farmland in the U.S. is shrinking at the rate of three acres per minute while the U.S. population and demand for food are growing.
Brand cites Henry Kissinger’s frequently quoted statement: “Control oil, and you control nations; control food, and you control the people.” Could Gates be out to “control the people” — by controlling the world’s food supply?
Brand reminds viewers that Gates once “famously announced” he planned to give away his fortune, and spend time helping the world’s poor.
But today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is worth $50 billion, prompting Brand to ask: “Has the Gates Foundation become too powerful?”
Citing an article in The Defender by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense, Brand points out that in addition to his vast land holdings, Gates has investments in GMO crops, seed patents, synthetic foods and artificial intelligence, including robotic farmworkers.
Gates also holds commanding positions in food giants such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Philip Morris, Kraft, General Foods, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble and Amazon (which owns Whole Foods), in addition to multinationals like Monsanto and Bayer that control the world’s chemical pesticide and petrochemical fertilizer markets.
In this video exposé of one of the most powerful men in the world, Brand says he’s not here to judge Gates as a human being — but it does seem like an awful lot of power for one individual to wield.
“It also concerns me that anyone can bias the direction of the fate of a planet so strongly,” Brand says.
Watch the video here:
