This is a National Science Foundation newsletter from 2009, it says Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the NSF $50 Million. This is old news but $50 million goes a long way.
National Science Foundation Announces Partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Foster Sustainable Agricultural Solutions
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114493&org=NSF
13 years later what does the National Science Foundation do?
Gives $500,000 to University of California Riverside scientist to see whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.
https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2021/09/16/grow-and-eat-your-own-vaccines
Now, does this explain why Bill Gates has been buying up all the farm land?
Fair warning, better start growing your own food or you will become a lab rat in the next Bill Gates research experiment.
This is an excellent point.
I remember back, several years ago - a couple of decades maybe - when GMO crops really burst onto the ag scene, big companies like Monsanto started SUING smaller farmers if their nonGMO crops were incidentally cross-polinated with the altered crops (think birds, bees and other insects, wind, etc.). And the big companies won! That's the power of their lobbyists in action.
So rather than the Monsanto et al being punished for contaminating other farmers' crops, they got to stick it to the little guy for 'stealing their intellectual property'. No joke.
Swinging back around to your point, even if Bill Gates only owns a small percentage of the whole in terms of productive acreage, if he can figure out how to plant mRNA crops that transmit the same capabilities to other farmers' fields through pollination, then it's all over!
This is a very big deal. And after all the dishonesty we've seen with the vaccines, I definitely would not put it past them to try this.