I am Darren Blanchard, the Oklahoma farmer arrested at a data center meeting after exceeding my allotted speaking time. Or maybe I was arrested because the local government disliked the content of my speech? The video is online: watch it and decide for yourself. (Editors – Here is a link: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BgQJhAV6r)
I am not writing today about an unlawful arrest in the Heartland. I am writing about the digital infrastructure buildout and its impact on the resources that sustain us: land, water and power. Rural America faces industrialization that threatens food security, affordable housing and, ultimately, national security.
A data center may require only a few hundred acres, but the infrastructure serving it reaches far beyond the property line. It includes wind turbines spanning multiple counties, thousand-acre solar projects paired with battery storage, dedicated gas or nuclear power plants, and electric transmission lines that take or devalue land.
My property near Tulsa is affected by an electric transmission project whose easement alone will occupy more than 30,000 acres across four states. This electricity is intended for data centers, not ordinary families. These projects will not lower electric bills as advertised. Instead, ratepayers will finance the infrastructure and absorb the costs of increased grid congestion.
Oklahoma’s major utilities gave sworn testimony that existing and planned energy generation is insufficient to meet projected demand, while customers face repeated utility-rate increases. These price hikes function like de facto taxes imposed without meaningful representation. Communities resist these developments, yet local citizens are still expected to bear the financial and environmental burden.
Rural land supports agricultural production and gives communities room to grow: responsible growth. Converting it to industrial use limits future housing and economic development while reducing our capacity to produce food. Americans already feel upward pressure at the grocery store. These projects also make it harder for growing communities to reserve land and infrastructure for the people who live there.
Consider Mayes County, Oklahoma, home to a Google data center that consumed 1.0814 billion gallons of water in 2025. A 3,000-acre solar project recently went online there. With that land removed from agricultural use, more than 2,500 head of cattle can no longer be raised there—and that does not include lost hay production. Consider what that means for beef prices.
Consider also data centers using on-site power supplemented by “backup” generators running nonstop. Beyond noise and air pollution, broader questions remain: How does this affect diesel prices? What does it mean for a wheat farmer in Wichita? When land, water, fuel and electricity become scarcer or more expensive, those costs move through the food supply chain and eventually appear on our grocery bills.
A nation cannot claim to strengthen its “digital” security at the expense of affordable housing and the food security of the people it is supposed to protect. That is why I ask: Is this truly national security, or is it corporate welfare and crony capitalism masquerading itself as national security? Just as with the video of my arrest, I will let you decide.
Darren Blanchard, the Oklahoma farmer arrested at a data center meeting
I am Darren Blanchard, the Oklahoma farmer arrested at a data center meeting after exceeding my allotted speaking time. Or maybe I was arrested because the local government disliked the content of my speech? The video is online: watch it and decide for yourself. (Editors – Here is a link:https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BgQJhAV6r)
