Standing near the Haskell County border in West Texas, fourth-generation farmer Cheyenne Buerger can see industrial cranes building a huge Google facility just over four miles to the northeast. Until recently, part of that same horizon was farmland he worked himself. After farming thousands of acres with his family for more than a century, Buerger was forced to give up 600 acres of rented farmland when his landlord suddenly sold the property to a developer clearing the site for the tech giant. The eviction gave the local farmer very little time to harvest his remaining crops and leave the land. "When I explained I had a crop on it, they said 'You can finish it, but that's it,'" Buerger said. "'You've got to be done in 60 days, and you're out." Losing the land near Haskell has taken away a large part of Buerger's local farming operation. Along with his family's 6,000 acres, where they grow cotton, wheat and milo, the rented fields gave the family more flexibility for crop rotations and livestock management. "It makes me feel a little threatened just from losing land to data centers," Buerger said. "We can't compete with that."
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