Notably, one Huddleston County resident who received an offer, 75-year-old Timothy Grosser, even rejected the offer to “name your price” when a tech company sought to buy his 250-acre farm, The Guardian reported.
“There’s nobody there,” said the grocer.
The farm is where he “lives, hunts and raises cattle” and where his grandson hunts turkeys for the family feast every Christmas.
“The money isn’t worth giving up your lifestyle,” Grosser said.
Another farmer in Wisconsin, Anthony Barta, was reportedly worried about what would happen to his neighbors if they accepted the deal offered to them – reflecting the deep ties between people whose farms have bordered each other for years. In his community, another farmer was offered between $70 million and $80 million for 6,000 acres.
“Me and my family, we own our farm and we have about 1,000 animals,” Barta said. “What will he do if he’s next to it? Can they even be there? You know, that’s our livelihood – the farm. We’re just worried about, if it does, what will happen to us and our neighbors and the farms and our community? What will happen to him?”
Some tech companies clearly aren’t taking “no” for an answer. At least one farmer who spent 51 years milking cows in Pennsylvania before the AI boom described tech companies as “relentless.”
Eighty-six-year-old Mervyn Raudabaugh Jr. came up with a creative solution to relieve the pressure of selling two contiguous farms. He reportedly deterred developers by turning to “a farmland conservation program that dedicates taxpayer dollars to protect agricultural resources.”
By working with the program, Roudabaugh will receive only about an eighth of what the developers are offering. But he said it’s worth knowing that their land will be preserved for farming purposes and out of the reach of persistent tech companies.
“These people have taken away days of my life,” Raudabaugh said.
Data center deals emerge amid fragile agricultural economy
For people in rural communities, the data center battle goes beyond concerns over water and electricity consumption – although those are concerns too. Communities are protecting the character of the land, which they do not want to see suddenly disrupted by extensive construction, data center noise pollution, or unexpected environmental impacts from large-scale operations.
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