86-year-old farmer turned down $15 million to keep his land away from AI data centers

The immense hype surrounding AI has caused enormous data centers to crop up across the country, triggering significant opposition. It's not just the loss of land: enormous power needs are pushing the grid into meltdown and driving up local electricity prices, catching the attention of politicians and their irate constituents.

An 86-year-old farmer from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, has heard enough. As local Fox affiliate WPMT reports, Mervin Raudabaugh, who has farmed the surrounding land for more than 60 years, turned down more than $15 million from data center developers in a package deal that involved three neighboring property owners as well.

The farmer was offered $60,000 per acre to build a data center on his property. But giving up his family legacy wasn't in the cards for him.

I was not interested in destroying my farms. That was the bottom line. It really wasn't so much the economic end of it. I just didn't want to see these two farms destroyed.

Instead, he sold the development rights in December for just under $2 million to a conservation trust, taking a significant loss but guaranteeing that it would stay farmland in perpetuity.

Users on social media called him a "legend" and argued he had "more integrity than the whole government":

Now that is a real hero in these gutless times!

$15M is huge, but clean water, quiet land, and legacy don't have a price tag.

The sheer amount of land being earmarked for massive, energy-hungry data centers is staggering. A data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is set to take up 600 acres, which could cost local residents their land, as ABC News reported this week.

Another octogenarian farmer, 83-year-old Tom Uttech, who has lived on his 52-acre Wisconsin property for almost 40 years, told the broadcaster that he "couldn't believe" that a local utility company was looking to build "power lines that are 300 or something feet tall, taller than apparently the Statue of Liberty," through his land to power the data center.

Per ABC, there are more than 3,000 data centers in the US, a number that will soon grow by 1,200 more, which are currently being constructed. Few, apart from tech company executives, are particularly keen on the idea, and the growing backlash has gotten the attention of politicians.

New York lawmakers recently announced a bill that would impose a three-year moratorium on developing new data centers in the state – at least the sixth state to introduce such legislation, as Wired reported earlier this month.

Meanwhile, industry leaders are looking for alternatives, with some suggesting launching data centers into space. While that could spare precious farmland, it remains to be seen whether it's even remotely feasible, both physically and financially.

"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 told WPMT. "The rest of every square inch is going to get built on. The American farm family is definitely in trouble."