Kentucky farm family rejects anonymous $26M data center offer

A Northern Kentucky farm family’s recent decision to reject a $26 million land offer is putting a spotlight on a growing national tension: the collision between farmland preservation and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Ida Huddleston, 82, and her daughter, Delsia Bare, turned down a lucrative proposal to sell part of their roughly 1,200-acre farm near Maysville, Kentucky — land their family has worked for generations.

“Stay and hold and feed a nation,” Bare said, according to WKRC. “$26 million doesn’t mean anything.”

The offer came from an unnamed company seeking land for a large-scale data center. The proposed development is part of a broader push by major technology firms to secure rural land for AI-powered infrastructure.

For the Huddleston family, the decision wasn’t financial, it was personal and historical.

“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 told the TV station. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”

That generational connection to the land ultimately outweighed an offer far above market value. Bare told Realtor.com, “There is no price on earth enough for what they are getting ready to do. There’s no replacing what they’re getting ready to destroy.”