Barb Kalbach

Iowa is heavily rooted in agriculture. It’s in our DNA. My husband and I farm on land that’s been in our family for four generations.

But Iowans are seeing our farmland rapidly being bought up by multibillion-dollar corporations who want to exploit our land and natural resources, so they can build massive data centers.

These companies have steadily bought up land in Iowa in the past two decades. And it’s accelerating, as other states have run out of space for these massive hubs or land prices have made it untenable.

As an agricultural state, Iowa has an abundance of affordable land and inexpensive energy. Companies view us as a water rich state that also has an extensive fiber optic network – all things that are appealing when a company is looking to build.

So far, Iowa’s more than 100 data centers cover more than 6,500 acres. That’s roughly 4,900 football fields or half the land size of the entire city of Ames. As our farmland and water is snatched up for data centers, Iowa needs to decide: are we going to be a data center state or an agricultural state? Because we can’t be both.

These large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day – the equivalent of the daily water use of Ankeny. Microsoft’s five-building campus in West Des Moines is the city’s largest water user, consuming as much as 68.5 million gallons a year.

It’s hard to tell how sustainable the massive drain on water supply has been, because Iowa’s elected leaders don’t bother to monitor how much water we have in reserves. We’re facing a water crisis that lawmakers have yet to address in any meaningful way.

Boil orders and watering bans have become more common, as factory farm runoff overloads our water with nitrates that are linked to cancer. It’s no surprise that our cancer rate is second in the nation and the only state where cases are growing.

Led by fed up Iowans, counties have started fighting back, adopting moratoriums on data centers across the state. Here in Adair County, we’re in the middle of adopting a moratorium, while neighboring Madison County already passed their measure.

Our supervisors brought urgency to the effort after talking to their peers in eastern Iowa, where communities are fighting multiple data centers. It’s only a matter of time before more data centers start moving west across the state, they said.

Plopping these behemoths in our communities is just the latest example of the hollowing out of rural Iowa by corporate greed. They get state and local tax breaks, create only a handful of permanent jobs, and plunder our natural resources. And we’re left holding the bag.

We have enough problems that need addressed by our elected officials. We don’t need to roll out the welcome mat for more big corporations who don’t understand our desire to be good stewards of the land and each other. Iowa needs to decide if it’s going to remain an agricultural hub or become a data center state. I vote for our farms.

Barb Kalbach is a 4th generation family farmer, retired registered nurse, and longtime member of Iowa CCI. She can be reached at barbnealkalbach@gmail.com.