A farming family in Kentucky have given an inspiring reason why they are refusing to sell their land at the hugely inflated prices offered by tech giants, who want to turn their 22 acres of pasture into a huge data center.
82-year-old Ida Huddleston's family turned down an astonishing $26 million for their collective 534 acres in northern Kentucky, after an undisclosed Fortune 100 tech company came and offered them roughly 10 times the land's value.
Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare, who holds the majority of the land in her name, joined the growing number of farmers turning down huge fortunes to turn their productive land into the vast data centers required for the artificial intelligence revolution.
With the family working the farm through the ups and downs of the past century, Bare showed something rare in the modern age and told WKRC that some things matter more than money, saying: "If it's my way, I'll stay and hold and feed a nation. 26 million doesn't mean anything."
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The family are not the only farmers in the local area that have been offered huge wads of cash to give up their ancestral properties, with some jumping at the hugely inflated bids, while others have held firm - despite the unnamed tech company's persistence.
But according to Bare, the huge cash offers fail to understand her family's ties to the area. She added: "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."
The Kentucky landowner explained how her family ties reach deep into the clay-heavy soil, saying: “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."
And this connection is not just to the area, but to her family's role in pivotal moments in the country's history. She added: “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”
Credit: Local 12 WKRC
But while the anonymous tech firm continues to try and snap up land in the local area, even making a bid to a local power station to draw down power equal to twice its current output, Bare's mom is having none of it.
After living through the upheavals and technological transformations of the past 80 years, Ida Huddleston 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.”
When asked if the proposed data center would improve the local economy and bring jobs, Huddleston simply called it a 'scam' and said: "I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them."
Yet, whether or not they agree to it, the data center could still be built nearby as a result of other farmers selling up. But for Bare, her commitment is like that of Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara.
She said: “As she was attached to that land, her spirit never would die. That’s the exact same thing for me right here.
"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.”
Topics: Food and Drink, Technology, Artificial Intelligence
William Morgan