In Mason County, Kentucky, an 82-year-old mother and her daughter have turned down a staggering $26 million offer from an unnamed Fortune 100 artificial intelligence company seeking to buy part of their family farm for a massive data center.
Ida Huddleston and her daughter, Delsia Bare, own approximately 1,200 acres of farmland just outside Maysville, about two and a half hours east of Louisville. The anonymous buyer approached them last April, proposing to purchase roughly half their property—around 600 acres—for a proposed AI data center campus. The offer valued the land at roughly ten times the local market rate of about $6,000 per acre.
For the family, the decision was never about the money. “Stay and hold and feed a nation,” Bare told local reporters. “$26 million doesn’t mean anything.” She emphasized their deep generational ties to the land: her grandfather and great-grandfather lived and worked there, raising wheat even through the Great Depression to help feed bread lines across the country.
Huddleston, who has lived on the property for decades, was equally firm. “I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them,” she said of claims the project would bring jobs and economic growth, calling the proposal a “scam.” She wants to pass the land on to the next generation rather than see it developed. Bare compared her attachment to Scarlett O’Hara’s bond with Tara in Gone with the Wind, saying the land sustains and defines her family.
Despite the Huddleston-Bare family’s refusal, the data center project appears to be moving forward. Other landowners in the area have accepted similar offers, and a request has been filed to rezone nearly 2,000 acres. A public meeting on the rezoning was scheduled for late March 2026.
The story has drawn national attention as a symbol of the tension between rapid tech-driven development and the preservation of America’s agricultural heritage. While the family says they have no regrets, they acknowledge that the data center could still rise nearby—on land once used to grow crops and raise cattle for tables across the nation.
SOURCES:
Kentucky family rejects $26 million bid to sell farm land for data center
Family Turned Down $26M Data Center Offer, but Say Others Haven’t
Family rejects $26M from AI company to keep farmland from being turned into a data center
