A farming family in Northern Kentucky just declined a $26 million offer for half of their land from an unnamed major tech company. According to Local12, Ida Huddlestone, 82, owned about 1,200 acres of farmland in the area that sells at about $6,000 an acre. However, a realtor showed up at their doorstep last year, offering Huddlestone and her daughter, Delsia Bare, more than 7 times the going rate for the area. Many other people would’ve jumped at the offer, but the family didn’t budge.
“My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family have all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it,” Bare said. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”
Many tech companies are joining in the rush of the AI infrastructure buildout, and they’re willing to pay top dollar for everything related to it. This includes memory and storage chips, leading to the current RAM and SSD crisis, as well as the land needed to place these data centers. But while AI companies are willing to pay way higher than the average going rate for land where they can put up their data centers, they’re receiving pushback from the community, with one company even resorting to secrecy to avoid backlash from local residents.
AI hyperscalers would often promise jobs and economic growth whenever they enter a community, but Huddleston refuses to believe them. “They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not. We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water — and that poison; well, I’ know we’ve had it,” the 82-year-old said. “I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them. That’s what I say: it’s a scam.” While building an AI data center does bring in construction jobs in the area, these are often gone after the project is finished. And, unlike manufacturing plants, which may require a good number of people, most data centers require only a few personnel to operate.
Aside from that, the presence of AI data centers has often been cited as the cause for reduced power quality in neighboring areas, as well as increasing electrical costs for the average American. It has gotten to the point that President Donald Trump had to summon major tech companies to the White House and made them promise to “pay their own way” when it comes to their electricity needs.
Unfortunately, despite the family’s refusal to sell, the company just modified its plans to put up its data center on the land of those who said yes to their offer. The unnamed firm has reportedly already filed a zoning request for 28 agricultural pieces of land covering an area of more than 2,000 acres. But as for Huddlestone, she said that she does not need the money and that she plans to die on her land. Her daughter, Delsia, feels the same way: “As long as I’m on this land — as long as it’s feeding me — as long as it’s taking care of me — there’s nothing that can destroy me if I’ve got this land.”
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