Big Tech’s land grab threatens Kentucky farms and power

Mason County, Kentucky, sits just an hour from Cincinnati but feels like another world. Its beautiful rolling hills, deep farming roots, and traditions make it a bastion of conservative culture. Trump carried the county by 44 points. Residents distrust globalism, Big Tech, and government collusion.

Yet Mason has become the latest target for one of the largest data centers in the world. The company behind it hides its name, cloaks officials in nondisclosure agreements, and dangles cash at landowners while refusing to reveal how it will feed the massive hunger for power and water.

The question now is whether Kentucky — and America — will heed the warning or allow ‘progress’ to consume the very land, food, water, and power that make progress possible.

The plan calls for a sprawling 5,000-acre “technology campus” near Big Pond and Tuckahoe roads. Local officials admit the buyer is a Fortune 20 giant, described only as a “global, top 10” company with “hundreds of thousands of employees.”

Residents say the tactics are familiar. A few landowners get offers — $35,000 an acre in this case — while the broader community is left to bear the burden: displaced farmland, strained resources, and declining property values. Good luck selling to anyone but the data-center developer once the deal is in motion.

Power drain

The proposed complex in Maysville would demand 2.2 gigawatts of power, starting at 110 megawatts by 2026 and hitting full capacity by 2028-2031. That’s the annual energy use of 1.8 million American homes. For a county of 17,000 people, the numbers are staggering. The project alone would nearly double the East Kentucky Power Cooperative’s yearly output.

And that’s before accounting for water. Data centers require enormous cooling systems that siphon off local supplies. Add in the direct loss of 5,000 acres of farmland and timberland — in a nation already facing record-low cattle herds and shrinking food security — and the price tag for “progress” keeps rising.

By comparison, the average coal plant sits on 585 acres; a natural gas plant, only 30. Those facilities power the nation. This one would devour power and water to feed servers.

A national trend

This isn’t just about Mason County. Hyperscale data centers are sprouting everywhere with the help of state and federal officials eager to rezone farmland. Twenty such facilities are already planned for Kentucky, 10 for Ohio, and 35 for Indiana. Each site removes productive farmland, stresses infrastructure, and hands more of the food and energy supply to giant corporations.

The sales pitch is always the same: jobs and economic development. Yet the real math looks different. The U.S. lost more than 100,000 beef-cow operations between 2017 and 2022. Farmers face higher feed costs, tighter margins, and competition from giant meat-packers. Now, Big Tech threatens to take what’s left.

Cronyism exposed

Mason County Judge-Executive Owen McNeill and other officials signed NDAs while promoting the deal. Residents see it for what it is: promises of prosperity in exchange for their land, heritage, and way of life. On Facebook, 1,500 locals in “We Are Mason County” compare it to a Nigerian prince scam — big promises, little proof, and huge risks.

The scam extends to Frankfort. House Bill 775 exempts data centers from Kentucky’s 6% sales and use tax for 50 years. Servers, networking equipment, cooling systems — all tax-free. Farmers pay sales tax on every tractor and plow, but Google and Meta lobbied for an endless free ride.

RELATED: Time to pump the brakes on Big Tech’s AI boondoggle

Photo by BlackJack3D via Getty Images

Land, food, water, power

At stake are the four essentials of civilization. Land grows food. Water sustains life. Power keeps the lights on. Once given away, none of these can be reclaimed. The boosters of artificial intelligence say America must have the infrastructure for it at any cost. But if AI can’t survive without tax breaks, secrecy, and the seizure of farmland, maybe it isn’t the inevitable juggernaut Silicon Valley claims.

Mason County itself bears the name of George Mason, the anti-Federalist who warned that monopolies in trade and commerce would mean “no Security for … the People for their Rights.” He did not live to see global monopolies seizing farmland in Kentucky, but he predicted the danger.

The question now is whether Kentucky — and America — will heed the warning or allow “progress” to consume the very land, food, water, and power that make progress possible.