Farmer owner has blunt six-word response to $26 million offer to convert their land into data center
A farmer who turned down a $26 million offer to purchase her land to turn it into a data center had a blunt message for the company's representative.
Initially Delsia Bare and her mom Ida Huddleston, who describe themselves as 'country hicks', had accepted the offer to purchase their land in Kentucky at well above its market value.
It had offered to buy 463 acres at $48,000 each from Bare's farm, and 71 acres from her mom's property nearby at $60,000 an acre.
But before the sale was fully finalized they discovered what their land was going to be used for, and perhaps why the buyers had been offering such a premium.
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The buyers wanted to turn the farm, which the family had farmed for 200 years, into a 2.2-gigawatt hyperscale data center.
Upon discovering the new information, the two women very quickly changed their minds, and were able to reverse the sale.
Once the cancellation was complete, Bare had a simple six-word message for the company's representative: “Kick rocks and don’t come back."
The pair don't seem particularly bothered by the loss of the millions they could have had, either.
“Even if I had $26 million I’d want to sit here in my chair, and have my coffee and eat my food where I always do," Huddleston told the Wall Street Journal.
Bare told the outlet that she 'never thought I’d be in a battle with a data center', adding: “I thought I was about as far out in the boondocks as you could get.”
The company involved has not been named, but many AI companies have been pursuing increasing construction of the data centers across the US.
While touted as ways to bring more economic activity to communities, these have been met with concerns about the environmental impact of the centers, as well as their enormous demand for electricity putting increased strain on the grid, and their water consumption.
Not only that, but there are also worries about the impact on the communities, including from the enormous, incessant noise produced by the centers, as well as concerns about chemical pollutants.
As for Bare, the family lived off their homestead during the Great Depression, and used timber grown on their land to build their home.
So even though the AI company offered 10 times the land's value on the open market, it wasn't enough.
“What I believe in is something called Jesus Christ, and he said to occupy, wherever you’re standing, you occupy until he returns,” said Bare.
“If I step off of this piece of property and it becomes something for an AI hub, then I have failed to occupy and I can be held accountable for that on the Judgment hour.”
The outlook was shared by her mom Ida, who said: “They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not.
“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.”
Topics: US News, Technology, Artificial Intelligence
Kit Roberts