Kyrie Irving Calls Bill Gates' Land and Water Ownership 'Weird'

Kyrie Irving used a recent Twitch livestream to question Bill Gates’ footprint in U.S. farmland and water rights.

“I still think that it’s weird that the Gates family, Bill Gates, owns a lot of the land in North Dakota,” Irving said, adding, “He owns the majority of the water in the United States. I think that’s weird.” He framed the remarks as “for informational purposes only,” and the clip spread across YouTube and X, prompting fact-checks and debate online.

According to Benzinga (via Yahoo), one person asked Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, to weigh in, and it replied: “Gates owns ~270,000 acres of farmland (0.03% of total US farmland), making him the largest private owner but not a majority. He doesn’t own most US water rights; they are tied to land and regulated, not dominated by any individual.” Another X user argued that concentrating control of food and water could represent an outsized influence.

So, what does Gates own? According to the Land Report 100, the Microsoft co-founder holds 275,000 acres of U.S. farmland across at least 18 states—about 0.03% of America’s 900 million farmland acres—making him the nation’s largest private farmland owner, but far from a majority landholder.

A 2022 deal in North Dakota drew attention when Red River Trust, linked to Gates, bought 2,100 acres from Campbell Farms for $13.5 million. The purchase was reviewed and approved by the state attorney general.

On water, information does not support the claim that Gates owns a majority share of U.S. water. While some land transactions can include water rights, those rights are highly regulated and vary by state. There’s no credible indication he controls a portion of national water supplies.

Irving’s recent comments subsequently resurfaced a 2022 Reddit AMA in which Gates wrote, “I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn’t some grand scheme involved—in fact, all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”