Ruralites worry most about data centers' impact on electric rates; urbanites join in concern about use of water and land

Results are from a national poll of 1,000 people.

Rural Americans are more concered than their urban and suburban neihbors about the proliferation of data centers needed for the computing for artificial intelligence, according to the latest Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey by agricultural economists at the University of Illinois and Purdue University.

Rural residents' greatest worry is that data centers will raise the cost of electricity. More than half in the poll said they are very worred about it. They are also concerned about overuse of water (but slightly less than urban residents are) and data centers' use of agriculatural land (but only slightly more than urban residents).

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The poll indicates that rural residents' "greatest concerns focus on the impacts that most directly affect their personal finances—particularly rising energy costs," the authors write. "While these individual-level concerns were significant, community leaders must take a broader perspective. In addition to the consumer impacts, they must also balance broader implications, including planning for future energy demand and infrastructure capacity, managing public finance and tax implications, evaluating opportunity costs relative to alternative land uses, and addressing land-use planning and zoning issues, among others. . . . Local leaders must better understand these potential issues so that they can make more informed decisions about siting data centers in their community and ask the right questions."

Data centers "can generate significant property tax revenue," but that can be reduced by tax incentives offered by state and local governments. "Not all data centers are the same, and the employment benefits of data centers vary, but the jobs impacts are often overstated," the authors write, citing recent research. "Many unknowns remain about the full impacts associated with data center growth and expansion.. . . 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."

The Pew Research Center says 87 percent of data centers are in urban areas, "but 67 percent of planned facilities are slated for rural communities," the authors write. "Moreover, 39 percent of planned data centers are in counties that currently have none . As these developments become more rural, data centers will increasingly affect farmland, as well as rural electricity and water systems. 

Here's an earlier Rural Blog item with story ideas and resources for reporting on data centers. Penn State has a list of common questions for communities to ask.

A new way to hit the hay: Camp on a farm

There's a new form of agri-tourism: Farms are using their pastures and parking lots for commercial camping, Ashley Stimpson reports for Offrange, which bills it as "a new way to hit the hay."

Several start-ups specialize in connecting farms with people looking for campsites. One is Harvest Hosts, which also connects campers with vineyards and breweries. "In lieu of a site fee, guests are required to make a minimum purchase of $30 from the business where they’re bunking — a bottle of wine, a bag of apples, maybe a gunny sack of pecans," Stimpson reports. "The host can charge a small fee for electricity or water hook-ups." Other firms include Hipcamp, Harvest Hosts, The Dyrt and Farmstay.

The demand for campsites is increasing, Stimpson notes: "More than 53 percent of campers nationwide had trouble finding an available campsite in 2025. Five years earlier, that number was only 11 percent."

Chaffee County, Colorado, has the nation's first ordinance governing commercial camping on farmland, "crafted with input from groups like the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Trust, the U.S. Forest Service, and local recreation outfitters," Stimpson reports. "When it was adopted at the end of 2024, more than 250 Chaffee County landowners became eligible to apply for a permit, and now stand to make anywhere from $5 thousand to $25 thousand in additional income, according to internal data provided by Hipcamp, which advocated for the legislation." So far, though, only a few ranchers have applied for or obtained permits.

Floods in places that have never had floodplain maps are latest evidence of how far FEMA's mapping needs to go

Recent floods in Northern Michigan surprised residents who didn't think they were at risk and didn't have insurance though rainfall amounts had been rising for many years. That's the latest example of outdated floodplain mapping by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, report Tammy Webber and M.C. Wildeman of The Associated Press.

"The federal government's mapping method is arguably outdated and does not account for actual risks as climate change increases the odds of more extreme weather," AP reports. FEMA "develops and updates maps that determine who's in a flood plain and must buy insurance, and to help communities plan. But it hasn’t developed maps in many less-populated areas, including some Michigan counties that experienced unprecedented flooding. . . . 

"Another issue: FEMA’s maps are based on risks of rivers, streams and other waterways overflowing their banks. But they don’t account for flooding caused strictly from increasingly heavy rainfall that overwhelms stormwater infrastructure in urban areas and inundates rural towns where there's nowhere for the water to go. First Street, a company that researches the financial implications of climate change, found more than twice the number of properties at significant flood risk nationwide after incorporating that rainfall data into its own models and by mapping the whole country, including smaller streams that FEMA does not."

FEMA, whose mapping has been criticized for years, wouldn't give AP an interview or respond to questions about whether it's updating its mapping methods and if this year’s flooding adds urgency to mapping less-populated areas, instead issuing a statement saying that 95% of the U.S. population lives in areas with floodplain maps, which are “snapshots in time.”

Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said FEMA has made little progress creating new maps in rural areas where development could occur, despite a 2012 congressional mandate. He said the agency has prioritized places with the greatest population and risk, while leaving "about two-thirds of the country’s streams, rivers and coastlines unmapped," AP reports. "Some of those areas are unpopulated federal land that likely won't be mapped."

The state floodplain managers' group estimates that full mapping of the nation would cost $4 billion to $12 billion money FEMA has never had. The group worries that FEMA "could fall even further behind due to significant staffing losses under the Trump administration," AP reports.

Local journalism crisis may be more in quality than quantity

Map from Rebuild Local News Coalition shows the equivalent ranges of local journalists by county. 

Discussion of the crisis in local news has focused more on quantity than quality, perhaps because the number of newspapers is much easier to measure than the quality of coverage. But new research shows a serious quality problem when it comes to coverage of education, supposedly a staple of local news, and health, which is a bigger problem in rural areas than the rest of the nation.

The latest Local Journalist Index, an annual study by Rebuild Local News and the artifical-intelligence communications platform Muck Rack, and "finds a dramatic lack of education and health care coverage in most communities," reports RLN, which seeks public policies to strengthen community news. "There is shockingly little education and health coverage."

The research examined 4.2 million local-news articles, looking for education stories that mentioned a community by name, indicating a story was local. In 77% of counties in the first quarter of 2026, there were no such stories. The share without a local health story was virtually the same: 76%. The same pattern was seen in lack of stories about the environment (77%) and transportation (82%).

The number of local reporters continued to decline. "The national average now stands at 7.8 local journalist equivalents per 100,000 residents, an 81% decline from roughly 40 per 100,000 in 2002," RLN reports. "Last year, we found 8.2 LJEs per 100,000 residents. Approximately 70% of U.S. counties, home to an estimated 209 million people, fall below even the already-anemic national average. Only 33 counties match the average number of journalists from 2002."

Perhaps because covering crime is easier than education, health and some other topics, "When there are fewer journalists, the portion of coverage devoted to crime actually goes up," RLN reports. "In counties with fewer than five LJEs per 100,000 residents, nearly one in five local articles about crime and justice, roughly 50% more than in counties with higher journalist density."

The report also includes a ranking of reporting capacity by state; analysis of local news and loneliness levels, which can rise with a decline in local news; comparisons with the Civic Information Index; and an analysis of LJEs and municipal borrowing costs, which tend to rise when coverage of local governments decline. Muck Rack and RLN make the full dataset available to researchers and others interested in doing their own analyses.

“This report is difficult to stomach,” said Steven Waldman, founder and president of RLN. “The shortage of local reporters remains so severe that communities are being left in the dark as coverage of education, healthcare, and core civic issues thins out or disappears altogether.”

The Institute for Rural Journalism, which publishes The Rural Blog, is on the steering committee of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

 

Trump loses support among rural voters; farm troubles cited

North Carolina farmer Michael McPherson says diesel-fuel
and fertilizer costs, and drought that halved his wheat
yield, "are really putting us into a bind." (W.Post photo)

President Trump is losing support among one of his stoutest groups of supporters, rural voters, and farmers' troubles appear to be the leading reason.

"Rural voters backed Trump’s economic policies by a 45 percent to 43 percent margin early last year but now disapprove of them 61 percent to 31 percent, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released this month," notes David Lynch of The Washington Post. Trump's overall approval among rural voters in the poll was 50 percent, down 10 points from the beginning of his second term. "A separate Purdue University-CME Group survey this month showed that agricultural producers in particular have grown more downbeat. From a high of 75 percent in December, the percentage of those surveyed saying the country is headed in the right direction fell to 52 percent in May."

"Trump’s February decision to join Israel in attacking Iran aggravated the farm economy’s struggles," Lynch reports. "Soybean growers, who were already suffering from the president’s tariffs, are expected to lose money in 2026 for the fourth straight year." Lynch notes that urea fertilizer now costs less than it did just before the war began, "but the financial damage has been done."

"More than 300 farms filed for bankruptcy last year — up 46 percent from the year before and the second year in a row that the number has climbed, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that total farm sector debt will rise to $624.7 billion this year — the highest on record — to weather current economic conditions, writes Matthew Choi of the Post. "The multiple crises in the agriculture sector have not yet translated to a massive conversion to Democrats, but they have energized some Democratic bids in rural areas and forced Republicans to defend their handling of rural issues. If farmers decide to stay home in November, that could have outsize consequences in a year when Republicans are fighting uphill to maintain control of Congress."