Farmers Chant 'Corporate Vultures' at Missouri's Secret Data Center Summit

Our Take

Credit to Land4DataCenter for putting a camera on something a lot of state capitols would rather you not see: a taxpayer-adjacent "summit" on data center development that explicitly locked out vendors, press, and the public, while rolling out the welcome mat for county officials and school board members. If the pitch to local government needs a closed door to work, that tells you something about the pitch.

This is the pattern we track everywhere the buildout lands — farmland, water tables, and school tax bases getting reshaped by decisions made before residents ever see a site plan. Missouri Rural Crisis Center's warning about land and water isn't hyperbole; it's the same checklist every county weighing a hyperscale campus should be running out loud, in public, before ink hits paper on tax abatements or water allocations.

The chant "we will remove them from office" is the real headline here. Voters watching officials meet privately with industry insiders, then vote on incentives days later, is exactly the accountability gap our facility map and take-action resources exist to close — find out what's proposed near you and who's actually deciding it.