Kentucky family rejects $26M offer to sell farmland for data center

In short: A Northern Kentucky family says it turned down a $26 million offer from a large AI company to buy farmland for a data center.

What happened

A family in Northern Kentucky, led by Ida Huddleston, 82, and her daughter Delsia Bare, rejected a $26 million offer to sell about half of their 1,200-acre farm outside Maysville. The buyer was described as a major artificial intelligence company, but the company name has not been made public.

The offer was made in April and worked out to roughly $60,000 per acre. That is about 10 times the local value of farmland in the area, which was described as around $6,000 per acre. Bare said her family has deep ties to the land and argued that keeping it matters more than the money.

Huddleston said she did not believe promises about jobs and local growth. She also pushed back on criticism aimed at farmers who resist selling.

Even though this one family refused, the company has reportedly bought land from other willing sellers in Mason County. It has also filed a request to rezone nearly 28 farm parcels totaling more than 2,000 acres near Big Pond Pike, Germantown Road, and Valley Pike Road.

A zoning request is the step needed to change how land can be used, like switching a property from “farming” to “industrial buildings.” Public meetings by the Joint Planning Commission are scheduled for March 25 and 26, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. at the Maysville Community and Technical College Fields Auditorium.

Why it matters

Data centers are large buildings full of computers, like warehouses for the internet. They can bring construction work and some long term jobs, but they can also change rural areas by using lots of land and electricity, and by replacing farmland with buildings.

Source: TechCrunch AI