Mother and daughter reject proposal to convert acreage into data center, citing heritage and agricultural purpose.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A Kentucky family has declined a $26 million offer to sell a portion of their farmland for development into an artificial intelligence data center, choosing instead to retain land that has been in their family for generations.
According to reporting from Local 12, Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston, were approached by a company seeking to purchase roughly half of their approximately 1,200-acre property near Maysville for a proposed data center project.
Bare said the decision to reject the offer was rooted in the land’s history and its continued role in agriculture. “Stay and hold and feed a nation,” she said. “$26 million doesn’t mean anything.”
She described the farm as a longstanding part of her family’s legacy. “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,” Bare said. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”
Huddleston supported the decision, emphasizing concerns about broader changes affecting farmland and resources. “They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” she 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.”
The proposed project reflects a growing demand for land suitable for large-scale data centers, driven in part by expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure. Such facilities often require significant acreage, access to power, and proximity to network connections.
Despite increasing interest from developers, the family said preserving the agricultural use of their land remained the priority.
The property remains under family ownership, with no plans to revisit the sale.
Original article
Comments