AI may be digital, but it still eats up real land

"A data-centre is a warehouse-scale building, and what it requires to operate at scale extends well beyond its walls, from power substations, to cooling systems, to access roads, to transmission corridors that can collectively cover several hundred acres per major facility. The Bell Regina facility alone will draw continuous electricity roughly equivalent to a mid-sized city at peak demand. That electricity requires transmission infrastructure, which in return requires land to cross and occupy. The digital economy thus has a physical footprint that competes for the same acres as agriculture."

"In the rural municipality of Rosser, just outside Winnipeg, a 94,000 square-foot canola and pea processing facility is being converted into a Bell Canada AI data centre. The building was completed in 2021. Merit Functional Foods, which built the facility with more than $100 million in federal financing went into receivership in 2023, unable to compete with low-prices pea protein imports from China. After sitting idle for several years, the building is being repurposed to house computing servers instead of grain crushers."

"Bell also announced a much larger AI data centre in the rural municipality of Sherwood, where ground broke in early May. The $12 billion project is expected to be partially operational in 2027. Residents have raised concerns about drainage, water, noise, road impacts and the pace at which the project moved toward local approval. These are not isolated cases. They are the first visible landings of a larger capital wave."

"An 86-year-old farmer in Pennsylvania, U.S., was offered more than $15 million for 261 acres wanted for data centre development. He said no. He said he loved the land and did not want to see it built over. That story still feels exceptional because most farmers are not making land decisions against sentiment alone. They are making them inside a much harder set of conditions: t"

A canola and pea processing facility near Winnipeg was completed in 2021 and later went idle after its builder entered receivership in 2023 due to competition from low-priced pea protein imports from China. The facility is now being converted into a Bell Canada AI data centre, replacing grain-crushing equipment with computing servers. Bell also plans a much larger AI data centre in Sherwood, with ground broken in early May and partial operations expected in 2027. The projects raise local concerns about drainage, water, noise, road impacts, and approval timelines. Data centres require extensive infrastructure beyond the building, including power substations, cooling systems, access roads, and transmission corridors that can span hundreds of acres, creating direct competition with agriculture.

Read at Realagriculture