A northern Kentucky woman says she declined a $26 million offer for a partial sale of her farmland that has been in her family for generations to build a data center.
Ida Huddleston and her family own about 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky. In April, an unnamed Fortune 100 artificial intelligence company reached out to them to purchase approximately half of the land.
Huddleston's daughter, Delsia Bare, said the big offer is meaningless. "Stay and hold and feed a nation," she told Local 12 news, which is based over the northern Kentucky border in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"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 told the outlet. "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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According to Local 12 news, land in Mason County is valued at about $6,000 per acre and the offer of $26 million is ten times this amount. Bare said dozens of other landowners have been approached by an anonymous buyer described as a major artificial intelligence company.
"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."
Huddleston hit back at claims that the center would provide economic growth and employment opportunities to the area.
"I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them, that’s what I say. It’s a scam."
Bare shared her deep attachment to the land in a comparison made to Scarlett O’Hara in "Gone With the Wind."
"Her spirit never would die. That’s the exact same thing for me right here," she told Local 12. "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."
According to Cushman & Wakefield, the average data center land transaction has grown to 224 acres, up 144% since 2022.
Some 40 states are offering tax incentives to attract these projects.
