Cart
0
I spend a lot of time worrying about what is happening to farmland, especially here in the Appalachian mountains. Development keeps expanding, land keeps getting more expensive, and farms that have been here for generations are becoming subdivisions, short-term rentals, and commercial development. As we become more dependent on technology, we also need more land and more power to support it.
I’m obviously not against technology. I rely on it every single day. Technology may not feed my cows or fix fences, but it is a huge part of how I make the money that allows me to keep doing those things. I sell cattle online and market my farm through social media. I run my website, take payments, answer emails, and advertise events. I can reach customers all over the country without ever leaving Western North Carolina. I probably couldn’t afford to keep doing what I do without technology. So I’m part of the problem too.
I’m using technology to make enough money to buy land and protect it from development. I’m working toward paying off what I have and buying adjoining pieces of the original farm that were sold off over the years. There’s some irony in that. Technology is helping me put an old farm back together while also creating more competition for the rural land I’m trying to protect.
We use the internet all day without thinking about what it actually takes to make it work. We stream videos, upload thousands of pictures, use AI, and store years of our lives digitally. But none of that just exists somewhere out there. It requires buildings full of servers. It requires electricity, power lines, roads, fiber, and land. Data centers use a lot of electricity and large amounts of water for cooling. All of that has to go somewhere.
I can’t criticize everyone else for wanting reliable internet, smartphones, online shopping, and all the other things I use myself. And for a small farm like mine, technology has opened doors that weren’t there that long ago. A farm in the mountains of North Carolina used to be limited to the people it could reach locally. Today I can sell cattle and genetics across the country, market my farm to people worldwide, and build income from this land in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before. Technology has actually given me another way to keep this farm a farm.
One of the biggest threats to farmland isn’t always someone coming along and developing it. Sometimes farming simply doesn’t make enough money for the person who owns the land to keep it. If I can use technology to make this farm more profitable and reach customers directly, I can build other income around the cattle, tourism, and genetics. That gives me a better chance to pay off the land and keep it in agriculture.
I also think we sometimes misunderstand why preserving farmland matters. It can get written off as nostalgia, like we just don’t want things to change. Maybe we want the mountains to look like they did when we were children. Maybe we would rather see cows in a field than buildings along the highway. I certainly would. But that isn’t the only reason this matters. We actually need this land. We need land to grow food and raise livestock. As more of it gets used for houses, roads, warehouses, power lines, data centers, and everything else we keep building, less is left for agriculture.
A data center may be worth more than a hayfield. A subdivision may be worth more than a cattle pasture. A corporation can pay more for land than a farmer trying to make enough selling cattle or hay to pay his property taxes. If the only thing that matters is who can write the biggest check today, agriculture is going to lose that bidding war over and over again. Maybe some of these projects do bring good jobs and tax revenue to rural communities. I understand that side, too. But technology changes fast, and we have no idea what the world will look like 50 or 100 years from now. I’m pretty confident people will still need to eat, and we’ll still need land to produce that food.
I’m also skeptical anytime the answer is simply more government regulation. People have plenty of reasons to distrust powerful companies, but we have plenty of reasons to distrust government too. I don’t want somebody hundreds of miles away deciding what a farmer should or shouldn’t be allowed to do with his own property. Property rights still matter to me, even when someone uses their property in a way I don’t particularly like.
That means farmland preservation can’t only be about telling people what they aren’t allowed to do. We have to make keeping land in agriculture financially possible so people actually have a reason to choose it. Farmers have to be able to make money. Families have to be able to pass land down without the next generation being forced to sell it. Agricultural businesses have to compete in a world where land prices keep going up.
I don’t want to preserve these mountains by turning them into a museum where nothing is ever allowed to change. Rural communities need jobs and businesses. We need reliable internet. People need places to live. But all of that comes at a cost. Somewhere, somebody has to provide the land, electricity, and water that make our lives possible, and I don’t want rural America to simply become the place where we put everything the rest of the country needs but doesn’t want to look at. I don’t want us to wake up twenty or thirty years from now and realize we traded productive farmland for technology that is already obsolete. I don’t know exactly where the balance is, but I think we need to start asking the question before we make decisions about land we can’t undo.
I’m obviously not against technology. I rely on it every single day. Technology may not feed my cows or fix fences, but it is a huge part of how I make the money that allows me to keep doing those things. I sell cattle online and market my farm through social media. I run my website, take payments, answer emails, and advertise events. I can reach customers all over the country without ever leaving Western North Carolina. I probably couldn’t afford to keep doing what I do without technology. So I’m part of the problem too.
I’m using technology to make enough money to buy land and protect it from development. I’m working toward paying off what I have and buying adjoining pieces of the original farm that were sold off over the years. There’s some irony in that. Technology is helping me put an old farm back together while also creating more competition for the rural land I’m trying to protect.
We use the internet all day without thinking about what it actually takes to make it work. We stream videos, upload thousands of pictures, use AI, and store years of our lives digitally. But none of that just exists somewhere out there. It requires buildings full of servers. It requires electricity, power lines, roads, fiber, and land. Data centers use a lot of electricity and large amounts of water for cooling. All of that has to go somewhere.
I can’t criticize everyone else for wanting reliable internet, smartphones, online shopping, and all the other things I use myself. And for a small farm like mine, technology has opened doors that weren’t there that long ago. A farm in the mountains of North Carolina used to be limited to the people it could reach locally. Today I can sell cattle and genetics across the country, market my farm to people worldwide, and build income from this land in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before. Technology has actually given me another way to keep this farm a farm.
One of the biggest threats to farmland isn’t always someone coming along and developing it. Sometimes farming simply doesn’t make enough money for the person who owns the land to keep it. If I can use technology to make this farm more profitable and reach customers directly, I can build other income around the cattle, tourism, and genetics. That gives me a better chance to pay off the land and keep it in agriculture.
I also think we sometimes misunderstand why preserving farmland matters. It can get written off as nostalgia, like we just don’t want things to change. Maybe we want the mountains to look like they did when we were children. Maybe we would rather see cows in a field than buildings along the highway. I certainly would. But that isn’t the only reason this matters. We actually need this land. We need land to grow food and raise livestock. As more of it gets used for houses, roads, warehouses, power lines, data centers, and everything else we keep building, less is left for agriculture.
A data center may be worth more than a hayfield. A subdivision may be worth more than a cattle pasture. A corporation can pay more for land than a farmer trying to make enough selling cattle or hay to pay his property taxes. If the only thing that matters is who can write the biggest check today, agriculture is going to lose that bidding war over and over again. Maybe some of these projects do bring good jobs and tax revenue to rural communities. I understand that side, too. But technology changes fast, and we have no idea what the world will look like 50 or 100 years from now. I’m pretty confident people will still need to eat, and we’ll still need land to produce that food.
I’m also skeptical anytime the answer is simply more government regulation. People have plenty of reasons to distrust powerful companies, but we have plenty of reasons to distrust government too. I don’t want somebody hundreds of miles away deciding what a farmer should or shouldn’t be allowed to do with his own property. Property rights still matter to me, even when someone uses their property in a way I don’t particularly like.
That means farmland preservation can’t only be about telling people what they aren’t allowed to do. We have to make keeping land in agriculture financially possible so people actually have a reason to choose it. Farmers have to be able to make money. Families have to be able to pass land down without the next generation being forced to sell it. Agricultural businesses have to compete in a world where land prices keep going up.
I don’t want to preserve these mountains by turning them into a museum where nothing is ever allowed to change. Rural communities need jobs and businesses. We need reliable internet. People need places to live. But all of that comes at a cost. Somewhere, somebody has to provide the land, electricity, and water that make our lives possible, and I don’t want rural America to simply become the place where we put everything the rest of the country needs but doesn’t want to look at. I don’t want us to wake up twenty or thirty years from now and realize we traded productive farmland for technology that is already obsolete. I don’t know exactly where the balance is, but I think we need to start asking the question before we make decisions about land we can’t undo.
