WASHINGTON, D.C. (RFD News) — As more data centers come online, developers continue to eye rural areas for new facilities.
Bert Nelson with the Farm Bureau says data centers are vital for the future of agriculture, but their location should be carefully considered as productive farmland continues to disappear.
“If we think about and look at what happened to land over the course of the years, since 1982, we’ve lost about 56 million acres of productive farmland. That’s about the size of Kansas. This matters because productive farmland, once it’s taken out of production, it’s pretty permanent. It rarely goes back in. It’s really important that we think about this in terms of food security and the well-being of our communities.”
Nelson says data centers also play an important role in modern agriculture, providing the data storage needed for technology used in the field.
“Data centers have become a critical infrastructure. When we think about it, I used to have a flip phone back when, typing with my thumb, sending the text that I was probably getting charged for. Now I’ve got an iPhone in front of me. When I looked at the internet use, it was 630 gigabytes of data. That’s a lot. Ag needs data too. A planter going across the field is using stored data to plant a seed, put fertilizer down, the exact amounts it’s needed, exactly where it needs to be. This leads to more production and more efficiency. This needs data storage.”
A recent Stanford University study found there are nearly 5,500 data centers across the U.S., more than 10 times the number in any other country.
7:30 PM ET | 6:30 PM CT | 5:30 PM MT | 4:30 PM ET
