A Pennsylvania farmer has turned down a reported $15 million data centre offer, choosing instead to permanently protect his family’s land through a conservation easement, a decision that has struck a chord as AI-driven infrastructure pushes deeper into rural America. Mervin Raudabaugh, a lifelong farmer in Cumberland County, sold the development rights on his 261-acre property for about $2 million, ensuring it can never be commercially developed. The land, farmed for decades and bound up with personal loss and memory, will remain agricultural even as demand for power-hungry data centres accelerates nationwide.
