A Kentucky family has turned down a $26 million offer to sell part of their farmland for the construction of an AI data center, choosing instead to protect their land and heritage.
According to reports, Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston, own roughly 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville. The proposed deal involved selling about 600 acres — nearly half of their property — to an anonymous company planning to build a data center.
Land in the area typically sells for around $6,000 per acre, making the offer nearly ten times higher than average market value. Despite the financial appeal, the family firmly declined.
“They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” Huddleston said. “We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water — and that poison. Well, we know we’ve had it.”
Concerns over AI data centers played a major role in their decision. Such facilities have faced criticism for high energy consumption, increased electricity costs, air pollution, and heavy water usage for cooling systems. The constant noise from server operations is also a concern for nearby residents.
Across the country, some communities have opposed similar developments for these reasons.
For Bare and Huddleston, however, the decision was deeply personal, rooted in their family’s long history with the land.
“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,” Bare said.
“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,” she added. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”
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