Kentucky cattle farmers turned down $26 million offer to sell, preventing farm from becoming data center

Kentucky cattle farmer Delsia Bare.

Two cattle farmers in northern Kentucky, a mother and daughter, are making national headlines for rejecting an offer to sell their respective farms for a total of $26 million to a mystery A.I. company that wants to build a giant data center on the land.

Delsia Bare says she was offered $48,000 per acre by an anonymous buyer to sell her 463-acre property, a total of $22 million. Her 82-year-old mother, Ida Huddleston, similarly rejected an offer from the same mystery would-be buyer of $4.26 million to sell her farm. The combined offer is about 10 times the going acreage rate in Mason County. 

Bare explained to Local 12 in a recent interview that there were multiple factors behind her decision to not sell the land. For one thing, Bare said, the farm has been in the family for generations and she lives in a farmhouse that was built by her grandfather decades ago. Huddleston said she was born on the farmland and plans to die there.

Also, the family is concerned about the stewardship of the land by whatever A.I. giant was behind the mega-offer. Huddleston suggested she was very skeptical of the motives of the would-be buyer and what the outcomes might truly be, despite what was pitched to them. The family also finds meaning in the fact that the cattle raised on the farm helps feed Americans. 

“I’d hold onto the land, and keep feeding the nation -- $26 million doesn’t mean anything,” Bare said, adding that she feels a similar connection to the place that Scarlett O'Hara felt in the classic film Gone With the Wind. 

"As long as I'm on this land, as long as it's feeding me, as long as it's taking care of me -- there's nothing that can destroy me if I've got this land." Watch the full interview with the farmers below.