Kentucky farm family rejects $26M from mystery data center giant. Why American farmers are saying no to Big Tech

[Passages]

Rudro Chakrabarti
Sun, March 22, 2026

Delsia Bare's family has worked the rolling farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky, for generations. Her grandfather and great-grandfather grew wheat there through the Depression, she says, keeping bread lines running when people had nothing else

So when men representing an unnamed Fortune 100 artificial intelligence company showed up last April with an offer to buy roughly half of her family's 1,200 acres — at about 10 times the going rate for Mason County farmland — Bare didn't hesitate

"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."

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/kentucky-farm-family-rejects-26m-194000973.html

Heros.

[highplainsdem]

1. Bravo!

[BWdem4life]

2. Good for her, but

Others are selling around her. That will ruin things for her anyway.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. So nice to think about her, BWdem4life. ❤️🙏

[D_Master81]

4. Are these going up everywhere?

I live in northern Indiana and we have already had 1 data center built about an hour away and now there’s talk of 2 more being proposed in the area. I think people are finally catching on that the promises of job growth are short term during construction and then you’re just left with higher utility bills.

[Passages]

5. 2 more? ugh

‘A bend in the trajectory’: U.S. data center development has hit snags because the power grid is approaching its limits to support them
March 2026
Data center development is slowing down, according to a new report from energy analytics firm Wood Mackenzie. In Q4 2025, developers only added 25 gigawatts of electricity capacity to their project pipeline, half of what was added the previous quarter.

The slowdown is a sign that endless data center growth projections to power AI technology may not materialize. As gas and power companies grapple with the economics of building new power plants or expanding their grids, growth remains limited to how much power is currently available.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/18/power-grids-snags-electricity-limits-data-centers/

March 11, 2026
Data center moratorium gains traction among Hill progressives
A handful of lawmakers is joining Vermont independent Bernie Sanders in wanting to pause new projects.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/11/data-center-moratorium-gains-traction-among-hill-progressives-00814163

[BannonsLiver]

6. It's not just the electric bills.

These facilities emit a very annoying, never-ending industrial hum that nobody wants to live around, which in turn has a catastrophic impact on home values. So your electric bills are sky high. Water bills are sky high. And that home you've been paying a mortgage on for a decade is now essentially worthless. That's what data centers do.