Get in the situation. You’re an 86-year-old farmer who enjoys doing what he does, but from time to time you get the idea that maybe it’s time to retire. One day they knock on your door and offer you 15 million dollars which, hey, they give you to plug holes and pay for the hospital in the United States in case of misfortune, but you decide to reject it because accepting would imply the destruction of those lands to which you have dedicated 60 years of your life.
Well, that’s what has happened to Mervin Raudabaugh: a farmer who has become a symbol of resistance to AI and data centers.
An offer you can refuse. Raudabaugh is a farmer who owns land in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He has spent his entire life cultivating the 100 hectares of his property, land that his family has been exploiting for generations, and has recently come to the fore after rejecting a proposal that some considered unrejectable.
60,000 dollars for every 4,000 m2 of their land, around 15 million dollars in total. The offer came from some developers interested in building a data center for artificial intelligence computing on the farm, but Mervin simply refused.
Not on my farm. Mervin doesn’t seem like a guy who is against AI specifically or what it means for the planet. He simply has a much more romantic motive: he doesn’t want to see his land turned into a layer of concrete with huge ships on top.
In some interviews, he assured that money does not matter to him and that what he wants is precisely that: for agricultural land to remain agricultural. He has expressed his concern about the future of family farming in a country where, if the soil is not protected, “every square centimeter runs the risk of being urbanized”, with what this implies for the land, fauna and the rural communities themselves.
But it has sold. However, Mervin is not going to retire with empty pockets because he did not accept the 15 million from the data center builders, but he did accept some millionaire from Lancaster Farmland Trust. There is talk of an operation of around two million euros to sell the right to develop their lands to this entity that is dedicated to the conversation of agricultural land.
What Marvin has done is secure the land that he loves so much, since the operation implies that his land will be permanently protected for agricultural use, legally preventing the change of land use. And it doesn’t matter if his heirs wanted to sell or not in the future: now the lands are protected.
a symbol. As is normal, Marvin’s rejection has been covered in a multitude of national media as a case of rebellion against data centers, a resounding “no” to Big Tech and something that is consuming the entire conversation in current technology. It is an example by guaranteeing the protection of the soil against the specific compensation in the form of money that these Big Tech companies offer to ensure long-term deterioration of the agricultural fabric and the landscape.
And although Marvin’s case is striking both for the amount and for the subsequent movement protecting his farm, he is not the only one. In other parts of the world, the debate has raged about whether it is worth hosting data centers, but in the United States in particular, a country that is betting enormous amounts of money on the development of AI, we are seeing more and more examples of this resistance against data centers.
And in an increasingly warlike environment, curiously it is something that both Democrats and Republicans are agreeing on.
Images | BlueChipFarms, Meta
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