When Andy and Tammy Orem learned that a major data center was proposed near their farmland in Shelby County, Indiana, they didn’t dismiss it as a done deal. Instead, they started asking the hard questions: What does a data center mean for our water? Who gets a say in these decisions? And what happens to farmland when corporate infrastructure claims local resources?
On September 22, Investigate Midwest and UpRoot organized a virtual conversation centered on exactly these questions, with the Orems and their neighbors discussing what a data center proposal means for rural land, water, energy, and democratic decision-making in farm country.
This is more than a local story. Shelby County sits in one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the country. Data centers don’t need farmland specifically, but they do need enormous amounts of water and reliable power. In counties where agriculture is the economic backbone and water is already stressed by drought and climate volatility, a data center isn’t just another facility. It’s a claim on the resources that farmers depend on to survive.
The numbers are stark. A single hyperscale data center can consume as much water annually as a city of 50,000 people. That matters in Indiana, where groundwater levels are already strained and where farming communities have watched power costs climb as utilities prioritize corporate demand. When a data center secures water rights or grid priority, farmers downstream face harder choices: invest in expensive irrigation upgrades, hope for rain, or sell out.
What the Orems are doing in Shelby County is what farmers across the Midwest are learning they have to do: organize before contracts get signed. Rural communities often don’t see data center proposals coming until it’s too late. By then, the tax incentives are negotiated, the environmental review is watered down, and the locals are left bearing the costs while the company captures the upside.
The Orems’ decision to host this conversation publicly is significant because it breaks the quiet corporate expansion playbook. Data center developers prefer communities where there’s little organized resistance. They bring glossy economic impact studies, promise jobs and tax revenue, and wait for local leaders to cut the ribbon. But when farmers and their allies ask tough questions about water, power, land use, and who actually benefits, the picture gets messier. Jobs promised often go to outside technicians. Tax breaks eat into local revenue. And the real costs, water depletion and power grid strain, fall on communities.
This matters in the broader fight over farmland and rural resources. Consolidation is already squeezing family farms. Monopoly control over equipment and markets has crushed grower independence. Now data centers represent a new frontier of corporate resource extraction in rural America: not buying land, but claiming water and power on terms that rural communities don’t negotiate well.
The Shelby County conversation is part of a larger awakening. Rural resistance to data centers is growing, with organizers in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and across the heartland pushing back on unfettered expansion. These communities are learning that they can say no, and that early organizing works.
What the Orems are proving is that farmers don’t have to be passive. They can ask the questions. They can convene their neighbors. They can insist that their water, their land, and their economic interests matter more than a tech company’s convenience.
The conversation in Shelby County is just the beginning. But it’s a beginning that matters. Other farming communities watching will see that resistance is possible. Regulators in nearby counties will pay attention. And data center developers will learn that rural communities are waking up to what’s at stake.
For now, the Orems and their neighbors are drawing a line: this water, this land, this power, matters to us. That line might hold. It might slow the data center down, force better terms, or it might stop it altogether. What it definitely does is return power to the people whose futures actually hang in the balance.
