Kentucky farming family rejects $26M offer from mystery data center giant: 'Stay and hold and feed a nation.' Why US farmers are turning down millions

"Stay and hold and feed a nation," she told them. "$26 million doesn't mean anything."

Her mother, Ida Huddleston, 82, had a blunter response about the company's promises of jobs and economic growth. "I say they're a liar, and the truth isn't in them," she said. "That's what I say. It's a scam."

The Huddlestons aren't alone. Across the country, farming families are rejecting multimillion-dollar buyout offers from tech companies scrambling to build sprawling AI data centers on rural land. What's playing out in places like Mason County, Kentucky, is less about an abstract policy debate than a series of very personal decisions — landowners weighing generational roots against offers that could set their families up for life.

A county divided

In Mason County alone, multiple families have refused to sell. Dr. Tim Grosser, who raises cattle on 250 acres of farmland with his son Andy, turned down offers as high as $35,000 per acre — more than four times the local market value (3, 4). The company eventually told him to name any price. He declined.

"That money can't buy happiness," Grosser said.

The company has not been publicly identified, though local officials describe it as a Fortune 100 technology firm that owns and operates large-scale campuses worldwide — and have characterized it as a "global, top 10" company with "hundreds of thousands of employees" (5). The scale of the proposal — including a 2.2-gigawatt power application filed with East Kentucky Power Cooperative — narrows the field to a handful of hyperscale operators (6).

Non-disclosure agreements signed by town leaders have left residents with limited information about who's behind the project, a point of frustration for community members who discovered its scope only after finding the power application in public records. Sierra Club organizer Elisa Owen told WEKU the secrecy was troubling, arguing that residents deserve to know what's being planned for their community.

Rezoning hearings for approximately 2,080 acres across 28 agricultural parcels are scheduled for March 25 and 26 at Maysville Community and Technical College (7). Despite the holdouts, the company has revised its plans using land from willing sellers, and the project continues to move forward.

From Kentucky to Pennsylvania, farmers are saying no

The pushback extends well beyond Mason County. In Pennsylvania, 86-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh rejected a $15.7 million offer — about $60,000 per acre — from data center developers for his 261-acre farm outside Harrisburg (8). Instead, he sold the development rights to the Lancaster Farmland Trust for under $2 million, legally ensuring the land will remain farmland forever.

"It breaks my heart to think of what's going to take place here, because only the land that's preserved here is going to be here," Raudabaugh said. "The American farm family is definitely in trouble."

In Virginia, a tobacco- and dairy-producing community in Pittsylvania County fought off a proposed 1,000-acre AI facility with help from the Southern Environmental Law Center (9). In Indiana, farmers say inflated land offers are driving up property taxes and putting expansion out of reach for anyone who actually wants to farm — meaning even those who refuse to sell end up paying a financial price. Then-Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who lost his seat during the March 2026 Republican primary, criticized the lack of oversight, saying there are "no guardrails of any kind" around data center development (10).

What's drawing tech to the farm

Unlike traditional cloud facilities, AI data centers don't need to be situated near metropolitan areas. Developers look for large, contiguous parcels with access to power and water — and few neighbors who are likely to push back. The average data center land transaction has grown to 224 acres, up 144% since 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield (11). Some 40 states are now offering tax incentives to attract these projects (12), and Executive Order 14318, signed by President Trump in July 2025, streamlined federal permitting for new builds.

Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day for cooling, equivalent to the daily usage of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (13). Much of that water evaporates in the cooling process and is never recovered (14).