(The Center Square) – When leaders in agriculture convened last week at Penn State’s annual Ag Progress Days, data centers were on the minds of attendees and elected officials alike.
Although these lawmakers were from different levels of government and opposite sides of the aisle, they seem to share some common ground over this contentious debate.
“Data centers are going to be a part of our life going forward,” said U.S. Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, chairman of the federal House Agriculture Committee. “I get that fact, but quite frankly, I do not want to see data centers on prime farmland.”
Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said there should be “intelligent debate” about where these data centers should be located.
“Fully agree, we should not put it on prime agricultural lands,” Redding said. “And we’ve had this conversation with every county that has had a farmland preservation program.”
“We lead the nation in that,” he added. “But in that program, we say that we’re going to preserve classes one through four soils, right? So, 58 counties already said we’re going to give that a priority.”
Troy Ott, the dean of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, agreed that data centers should be on lands “that are of lower value.”
As the conversation about the issue has shifted over the past year, some lawmakers, including state Rep. Marla Brown, R-Lawrence, want to prohibit data centers on agricultural land and have authored a proposal on the matter.
Some legislators have gone even further and want to see a moratorium. In the Pennsylvania General Assembly, state Sen. Katie Muth, D-Chester, wants to see legislation signed to have a three-year moratorium on data centers. At the federal level, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center Moratorium Act, which they said would institute “an immediate federal moratorium on AI data centers until strong national safeguards are in place.”
While Redding and Thompson have endorsed the idea of keeping data centers off of farmland, they seem to think development shouldn’t be stopped entirely.
“I mean, this is both a state competitiveness issue; it is a national competitiveness issue, that there are foreign interests who don’t have our interests at heart, by the way, who would very much like to have the control over the data and all that,” Redding said. “So, it’s not that simple as let’s close it off, let’s wall off, you know, let’s decide not to get into this and put prohibitions in.”
Thompson described it as an “all hands on effort where government and citizens and communities all working together here because it’s here, the demand for it.”
Ott also argued that the decisions of where to put them should be up to the local communities and the state should not shun them.
“There is real opportunities that are going to happen somewhere,” Ott said. “The question is whether those opportunities and that economic growth is going to happen in Pennsylvania.”
Where should these data centers be built? Thompson and Redding both floated the same idea.
“My congressional district has more abandoned mine sites than the other 434 congressional districts added together: be a great place for them,” Thompson said.
“I have a hog farm theory, that we ought to treat data centers like hog farms,” he continued. “We put them places where we can’t see them or smell them, alright.”
Redding noted that there are 160,000 acres of abandoned mines in Pennsylvania.
“So, you have to sort of look at where do you want to put it or could put it,” he said. “Obviously, you need both land and you need some other resources to go with it, but that’s certainly a key consideration.”
However, concerns remain about the impact these data centers have on local communities.
Redding argued that the debate around data centers has “become proxy for land use discussions,” and referenced the lack of attention warehouses being built on farmland have received in comparison.
Ott seemed optimistic that universities like Penn State could help address the challenges posed by data centers.
“That’s the way universities were built: to solve problems, and there is no problem with data centers that can’t be solved,” Ott said.
While skepticism was shared about the impact data centers would have on their communities, advancements in technology and artificial intelligence were celebrated by those at Ag Progress Days.
One of those specifically highlighted during these events was the creation of Tilva, an intelligence-powered tool, unveiled at the Pennsylvania Farm Show earlier this year. Tilva, powered by PlantVillage AI and backed by Penn State Extension experts, “combines advanced technology with real-world expertise to help you make informed decisions with confidence.”
