By Mark White and Sarah Lowel el.at
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape our economy and workforce. Data centers serve as the physical infrastructure for AI, but they come with notable costs and unknowns. These unknowns have generated consumer concerns around issues such as land use—especially farmland—and their impact on infrastructure needs, energy consumption, and water use. Given the growing prevalence of data centers, the Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey recently assessed US consumers’ concerns about the impact of data centers and AI. This article discusses the results and presents potential implications for rural economic development and community leaders.
Data Centers Power the Digital and AI Ecosystem
Data centers physically house the servers, data, and infrastructure that support the internet, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. These facilities require reliable access to large amounts of electricity as they use a lot of power, and significant amounts of water to support the liquid-cooling systems needed to prevent overheating (Lawson, Offutt, Ortiz, and Zhu, 2026). Relevant to rural areas, modern data centers built to support AI require 500-800 acres of land (Cvengros and Skae, 2024), and in some instances, these data centers will require more land. Given this growing need for developable land, many rural data centers are built on farmland.
Data center development can potentially contribute to local economic development. They are capital-intensive developments that, in some instances, can generate significant property tax revenue for some local jurisdictions. That said, specific tax incentives available to data-center owners and operators will determine the overall magnitude of the tax benefits. Not all data centers are the same, and the employment benefits of data centers vary, but the jobs impacts are often overstated (Pipa and Aley, 2026). Outside of the construction phase, the local employment impacts related to data center operation, maintenance, and security are more modest. Data centers have also been shown to raise house prices. This can benefit property owners, but these increases can also increase costs for renters and prospective homeowners (Alvarez et al., 2026).
Many unknowns remain about the full impacts associated with data center growth and expansion. According to the UVA Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, by 2030 the energy requirements for data centers are projected to more than double in Illinois and triple in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin (Ferreira, Shobe, Rephann, and Scheffel, 2026). In addition to the greater demands on energy generation and transmission, these developments will also impact water usage, wastewater discharge, and land use. Additionally, communities must also consider how these developments will affect air quality, noise pollution, and the economic trade-offs associated with data center development (Walker and Goldsmith, 2026).
Given these uncertainties, public views of data centers are mixed and may vary depending on where people live. In 2024, there were 115 data centers operating in Illinois—mostly located in the Greater Chicago area—and an additional 67 were expected to open by 2030 (Ferreira, Shobe, Rephann, and Scheffel, 2026). These data centers directly employed almost 10,000 people and generated $131M in state tax revenue and $127M for localities across the state (2024 dollars). However, the Pew Research Center reports that nationwide, 87% of existing data centers are in urban areas, but 67% of planned facilities are slated for rural communities. Moreover, 39% of planned data centers are in counties that currently have none (Seets and Radde, 2026). As these developments become more rural, data centers will increasingly affect farmland, as well as rural electricity and water systems.
Source : illinois.edu