Gates joins Rinehart in cattle country

We wonder if the world’s richest man has taken a liking to the technology of our oldest beef producer.

Bill Gates, right, and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

Burger-loving billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has ­famously followed a data-led path from vegetarian back to omnivore in the past year.

And now we wonder if the world’s richest man has taken a liking to the technology of our oldest beef producer.

We can reveal that after the Microsoft founder dined in Sydney last week with some of Australia’s top billionaires — namely mining-turned-agribusiness mag­nates Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest and packaging brothers-in-law Anthony Pratt and Raphael Geminder — he ventured north to Queensland to visit Wylarah Station, 450km west of Brisbane.

The Gates convoy jetted into Surat, the nearest service town, and then ventured by road to the Australian Agricultural Company-owned property.

There he apparently met with some of the group’s management and a consultant to the company, Paul Wood, who these days is at Griffith Uni­versity but was once the CEO of the Australia Abattoirs Group.

What this secret rendezvous was all about is a matter of ­conjecture.

But don’t be surprised if there is some announcement in the next month or two about the $US44 billion ($59bn) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnering with AACo to use the Australian firm’s genetics technology in Africa.

Gates trumpeted last year that “innovation will improve our ability to produce meat’’.

Whatever was agreed, we can be sure that with Gina fresh from her deal to buy the Kidman cattle company and Twiggy now with WA beef producer Harvey Beef in his stable, meat was surely on the conversation menu at Gates’s billionaires Sydney dinner — which, we understand, took place in Pratt’s Circular Quay apartment.