"Despite sustainable agricultural development being one of the key focus areas for his nonprofit Gates Foundation, the Microsoft co-founder claims that his farmland investments are not tied to climate. But while Gates might be solely focused on returns, one should not overlook farmland investing’s potential to drive sustainability on a massive scale."

how is a non-profit able to make farmland investments at all? What exactly is the difference between an investment vehicle and a non-profit?

But... these guys care for us!

Because a non-profit in the US just means that they can't distribute profits to the shareholders, not that they can't try to make money. They just need to use their profits to further their mission instead of distributing to shareholders. For example, the Gates Foundation could own a completely conventional farm, and run it like a conventional farm, but any profits they generate could be used to buy and deliver malaria pills to at-need countries (or something like that). That would be an acceptable reason a non-profit owns farmland.

The giant German conglomerate Bosch is structured in a similar way. 92% of the company is owned by the Bosch family charitable foundation 'Robert Bosch Stiftung'

any profits they generate could be used to buy more farms to make more profits to buy more farms with

sure - it could buy malaria pills, or it could just buy more farms.

I think in the US there are also a good tax breaks for creating 'farms' on your land. Since we give so much subsidy to the industry. IIRC lot of billionaires will get sheep grazing or something like that to claim their mega mansions as farms. I thought I remember Marc Cuban is an example but can't find a quick source. So maybe my memory is wrong on this one.

Here in NJ a typical middle class house pays 10-25k/yr in property taxes. But if you have 5 acres and sell a few thousand dollars worth of pumpkins you pay near zero because you're a farm. https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/09/how-to-cut-your-property...