Kentucky woman rejects $26M offer to turn her farm into a data center

For generations, Ida Huddleston and her family have owned a farm in northern Kentucky. And they’ve turned down at least one multimillion-dollar offer to preserve it.

Last year, a “major artificial intelligence company” offered them $26 million to sell part of their farm for a proposed data center, according to a recent report from WKRC. Huddleston and her family declined, saying they didn’t want a data center built near them or on any of their 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky.

“They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” Huddleston, who is 82, told Local 12 WKRC. “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,” apparently referring to recent water shortages and ground poisoning that’s been widely reported in land 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, revised its plans and filed a zoning request to rezone more than 2,000 acres in northern Kentucky, according to the report — meaning the AI firm may still build its data center next to Huddleston’s land.