After years of hardship, Texas agriculture faces a new threat: data centers

Buerger is the fourth generation of his family to farm land near Stamford and Haskell. His operation runs 6,000 acres of cotton, wheat and milo, plus a few hundred rented acres near Haskell. When his landlord sold 600 of those acres to a third-party buyer for a Google facility, Buerger got no negotiation, no warning, just a deadline.

That tension is playing out across Texas agriculture. Data centers and farms compete for the same three things: water, land, and electricity. For West Texas producers already grinding through drought cycles and tight margins, losing ground to tech infrastructure is not a distant worry. It is showing up in lease renewals and land sales right now.

For folks in Lubbock and across the South Plains, this hits close. Cotton country is the economic backbone out here, and the farmland surrounding these communities is not just scenery. Losing acreage to data center development shrinks the regional agricultural base and puts pressure on remaining operators to absorb costs they cannot always pass along.

It took one transaction to end the Buerger family's lease on 600 of those acres.