A Pennsylvania farmer turned down a $15 million offer from major technology developers for his property
A Pennsylvania farmer turned down the opportunity to become a multi-millionaire to keep his land.
When a data center developer wanted to acquire an 86-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh‘s 261 acres spread across two farms in Mechanicsburg dangled $15 million in front of the lifelong farmer.
But Raudabaugh turned down the windfall, opting to transfer the land to a land trust at a fraction of the offered price.
“It was my life,” Raudabaugh said Fox 43 News of the land he has been working for fifty years. “I told you [the data center company] No, I wasn’t interested in destroying my farms.
“That was really the starting point,” he continued. ‘It wasn’t so much the economic purpose of it. I just didn’t want these two farms to be destroyed.
“Only the land that is retained here will remain here. The rest, every square centimeter, will be built on.’
Rather than see that happen, he sold the development rights to a trust that will ensure the land is used exclusively for agriculture.
Lancaster Farmland Trust (LTF), a nonprofit that protects land in Cumberland County, reimbursed the farmer with about $2 million — a small percentage of what he could have earned if he had turned over his acres of lush farmland for development as a behemoth data center.
The land can still be sold in the future, but only to someone who will use it for agricultural purposes.
Pennsylvania and data centers
The state is a prime place for data center development due to its large parcels of open agricultural land and proximity to transportation corridors and major energy companies.
Last year, residents of the Valley View Estates mobile park in Archbald, PA, received the news that the owner of their community had entered into a binding sales agreement and that the new owners were tied to Project Gravity, a planned data center development that will at least six buildings and 1.62 million square feet.
At least in Lackawanna County there are 11 data center campuses proposed by developers, of which there are six in Archbald. Commissioner Bill Gaughan asked the governor. Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania General Assembly for a three-year statewide moratorium on the approval of new large-scale data centers to study their impact.
“I know Pennsylvanians have real concerns about these data centers and the impact they could have on our communities, our energy bills and our environment,” Shapiro said during his Feb. 3 budget speech. “And so do I.”
Save land from development
The Lancaster Farmland Trust, founded in 1988, has since saved more than 80,000 acres (38,310 hectares) with 618 easements.
The LTF is able to do this thanks to a 2013 voter-approved referendum that allowed for a slight increase in Silver Spring Township’s income tax to fund the preservation of farmland, forests and open space.
According to figures, the cost to taxpayers is only about $120 per household annually Lancaster Agriculture.
Once the land has the easement, the LTF ensures farmland remains a farm forever, CEO said Jeff Swinehart tells Realtor.com®.
While large parcels of open land have long tantalized business developers, the risk of prime agricultural land being lost to data centers is somewhat new and is rapidly increasing due to the expansion of AI.
Data center builders – including deep-pocketed companies like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Apple – can offer unprecedented paydays.
A conservation group like the LTF can only compensate a landowner about 20% of what the land is worth to a developer, Swinehart says, making it extremely difficult to compete in this market.
“Unfortunately, society views agricultural land as not at its highest and best,” he says. “That it is ‘idle’ land waiting for a better use. So it becomes an easy target for any type of development.”
As older generations of farmers transition out of agricultural life, this is a crucial time for the future of farmland.
“In many cases, we see tension between siblings when they leave an estate on the farm, and want to maximize the monetary return on that asset,” Swinehart says.
“We’ve had numerous cases involving four, five, six siblings, and someone who might want to keep it [the land] and the others don’t. So the standard response is: ‘We’ll just sell it.’ What does that mean for the landscape?”
Raudabaugh told the media that the data center builder (he did not name) who approached him was ruthless.
“These people made my life miserable,” Raudabaugh told Lancaster Farming. Realtor.com has contacted Raudabaugh for comment.
The farmer’s deep connection to his land – he told someone his mother died in his arms in the barn – meant he had no interest in turning it over to a data center.
According to him, they harassed him so much that his lawyer considered filing a complaint against them in court. Laura Brownvice chairman of the Silver Spring Board of Supervisors, said WTM. Brown then approached the council’s land trust partner, LTF, for help.
Swinehart tells Realtor.com he doesn’t know the exact details of how the data center developer approached the elderly farmer, but his understanding of the developers’ methods is that “they walk along farm paths and knock on doors, and if they get a no, they come back again.”
The trust cannot compete with deep-pocketed developers from a monetary perspective, he says. “But where we can compete is in maintaining the value that these farmers bring to the country.
“There is a legacy that farming families want to leave behind, but it goes deeper than the legacy of any individual. It is a passion for the land itself and a desire to ensure that the land can provide for future generations.”
And for that, he says, passionate farmers like Raudabaugh are “willing to give up significant financial gains.”
