A Kentucky family turned down $26 million to keep their farm from becoming a data center
A mother and daughter in Mason County, Kentucky refused a Fortune 100 offer for their 1,200-acre farm, even as the county pushed ahead with a huge AI data center project nearby.
What happened: In April 2025, an unnamed Fortune 100 company offered Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare $26 million for part of their family's 1,200-acre cattle farm near Maysville, Kentucky, to build a data center campus. Bare briefly signed a purchase contract, partly out of fear of eminent domain and pressure from developers who would not identify themselves, then backed out with her mother once they learned from neighbors what the land would be used for. Huddleston says she intends to keep farming the land and pass it to the next generation.
Why it matters: Their refusal plays out against a much bigger shift: AI's hunger for land and electricity. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found U.S. data centers used about 176 terawatt-hours of power in 2023, up from 58 terawatt-hours in 2014, and could consume 6.7% to 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028. The International Energy Agency says data centers could drive nearly half of U.S. electricity demand growth through 2030. That demand is why developers are now chasing farmland, not just empty industrial lots.
How it works, plainly: Data centers are essentially giant buildings of computer servers that need steady power and large footprints of land, often near transmission lines or water for cooling. Maysville's city manager says this project would use a closed-loop water system to limit contamination and produce no more solid waste than an existing factory. But building one still means buying up large tracts of farmland, sometimes from owners who feel they have little real choice once county officials and unnamed buyers get involved.
The rollout: The fight continued past the family's refusal. On May 22, 2026, the Mason County Fiscal Court voted to rezone 28 properties covering 2,080 acres for rural industrial use, according to Data Center Dynamics. In October 2026, the court unanimously approved a resolution to move forward with a hyperscale data center contracting with Meta, per WKYT. Huddleston and Bare say they plan to keep fighting to keep their land out of it, regardless of what happens around them.