The tech industry’s relentless push for data centers is colliding with farmers who see the projects as a threat to their way of life, fueling unrest in Republican primaries and vocal criticism from conservative candidates.
Data center proponents view the nation's vast swaths of farmland as prime sites for the sprawling server-packed facilities needed to support President Donald Trump's goal of making the U.S. the dominant force in developing artificial intelligence.
But farmers and some Republicans vying to represent them contend that the support for the projects is sending the wrong message at a time when deep-red rural America is being buffeted by the president’s tariff agenda and the high cost of living.
“There’s no oversight, there's no regulation, there's no organization, there's no guardrails of any kind,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a staunch Trump supporter who is running for reelection, said of data centers. “So they can pop up wherever they want to, as often as they want to, and take up as much land as they want to.”
Miller recently proposed creating “agriculture freedom zones” that would use federal or state tax incentives to push data center development away from agricultural land. It’s an idea he said he pitched to White House adviser Peter Navarro as a way to place a check on tech companies.
Data center developers target rural areas for their projects because, like farms, they require large blocks of contiguous land as well as access to substantial supplies of water and electric power. But their rapid growth has raised questions in farm country and beyond about the potential impact on those shared resources and neighboring communities.
A recent poll from POLITICO and Public First found that half of voters surveyed support building more data centers in the U.S., versus 17 percent who oppose them. That support falls to roughly 36 percent if the data center is being built in their local area, within 3 miles of where they live.
Trump has pushed to accelerate the buildout of data centers by cutting red tape and shortening permitting timelines. His AI strategy touts America as the current leader in data center construction and argues that it is “imperative that the United States leverage this advantage,” linking it to national security and economic prosperity.
The White House has tried to balance its loyalty to rural America — which has voted for Trump by large margins — with its alliance with the tech giants driving AI.
“The Trump administration is aware of Americans’ concerns surrounding data center investments in their communities, and is working closely with tech companies to proactively address them with forthcoming policy announcements,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told POLITICO in a statement. “America’s prosperity relies on our continued dominance in both agriculture and the cutting-edge technologies of the future, and the Trump administration is committed to supporting both.”
But government officials from both parties have been grappling with just how far to go in following Trump’s lead.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has expressed support for data center projects, and Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis both floated placing guardrails on Trump’s AI initiative.
Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who introduced a bipartisan bill that seeks to study the affordability impact of AI data center expansions in rural America, told POLITICO that the massive amount of water data centers need for cooling is acutely important in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a major agricultural area that is historically drought-prone.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called for a national moratorium on construction, and some activist candidates on the right have made opposition to data centers a rallying cry.
“I fear the Republican Party is focused more on the ‘Mag Seven’ than they are on MAGA,” James Fishback, a far-right candidate for Florida governor, said in an interview, referring to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. “They're not building an AI data center next door to Mar-a-Lago. They're building AI data centers in our agricultural communities like Loxahatchee, like Fort Meade, and I'm running for governor to stop that.”
Fishback, an online provocateur who’s running a longshot campaign against heavyweights including front-runner Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), said rural voters he’s spoken with are less concerned by Trump’s AI arms race and more focused on how data centers will take up land, contaminate water and drive up their electricity bills.
Karen Dalton — one of three Republicans primarying Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a vocal supporter of Trump’s AI dominance initiative — said she’s heard from frustrated farmers who have had trouble acquiring new land in rural Pennsylvania. The district she is running to represent contains Middlesex Township, the site of a planned data center.
“We're taking farmland that could be used to grow food, and we're making it available to data centers,” Dalton said. “I think that's short-sighted. We should be more focused on our farmers that are already hurting because of the tariffs.”
Perry did not respond to a request for comment.
But the concerns raised by Dalton, Fishback and other politicians are only a momentary obstacle for the tech industry, said Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, an industry group hyper-focused on advancing the technology.
“In the near term, if a locality says no to a data center, you're not saying no to that data center forever,” Max said. “Just like the seasons change in farming, the seasons of business change and the products of the 21st century change. And right now, the major part of the 21st century is artificial intelligence and data centers.”
He acknowledged that the projects have become a “big controversial issue” in a lot of elections but he argued that fears about the scarcity of American farmland are overblown and that AI tools will be a boon to farming in the long run.
Republicans who seek to slow the spread of data centers should “look yourself in the mirror,” Max said, and ask if they really stand for free markets and capitalism.
Still, Tom Leonard, a Republican who is running for governor in Michigan, said data centers “could be the biggest issue this election cycle.” The front-runner in his primary, Rep. John James (R-Mich.), supports regulations on data centers, but isn’t as hawkish as Leonard, who wants a one-year moratorium on building them.
“There are too many people running for office that are either overlooking this and not taking it seriously, or frankly, they're too afraid of the special interest to really take it on,” Leonard said.
“I'm visiting townships with populations anywhere from 100 to 1,500, and there are 200 or 300 people showing up,” he said. “This is a hot-button issue that they care about.”
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