Mary Hendrickson quoted in The Guardian
A recent article in The Guardian titled “US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’” quoted Mary Hendrickson, Professor in Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri and Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security. The article discussed how many companies that are trying to build AI data centers have attempted to buy large swaths of farmland. However, farmers have by and large resisted these efforts to purchase their land. Hendrickson provided expert knowledge on the importance of farms to rural families and communities, noting that many farmers feel a responsibility to previous generations and citing the tragedies that occurred during the 1980s farm crisis. She also notes that transforming farmland into AI data centers would likely be irreversible.