A Kentucky woman turns down a $26 million offer to turn her farm into a data center

For generations, Ida Huddleston and her family have owned a farm in northern Kentucky. They have rejected at least one multi-million dollar offer to preserve it.

Last year, a “major AI company” offered them $26 million to sell part of their farm for a proposed data center, according to a recent report by WKRC. Huddleston and her family declined, saying they did not want to build a data center near them or on any of their 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky.

“They call us stupid old farmers, but we’re not,” Huddleston, 82, told Local 12 WKRC. “We know that as our food disappears, our land disappears, and we don’t have any water — and that’s poison. Well, we know we’ve been exposed to it,” he said, apparently referring to recent water shortages and widely reported land poisoning on lands near data centers.

In an interview with the news station, Huddleston said she doubted the data center would bring jobs or economic growth to Mason County. “It’s a scam,” she said.

The company, which WKRC did not name, has revised its plans and filed a zoning application to rezone more than 2,000 acres in northern Kentucky, according to the report — meaning the artificial intelligence company may still build its data center next to the Huddleston land.