You cannot grow wheat on a server. That sounds obvious until you look at where some of Alberta’s biggest data centre proposals want to put down concrete. Not on marginal scrub or an old industrial lot, but on classified, farmable soil that has fed people for generations. Once that land is paved, it is not coming back, and no amount of computing power replaces it.
Rocky View County saw this clearly last year. A developer pitched a campus of roughly 448 hectares, six data centres built out over 15 to 20 years, with its own reservoir and power plant. More than 50 residents stood up to oppose it and only a handful spoke in favour. Council rejected it, and the reeve pointed straight at the proposed location and its impact on local agricultural producers. The county then went further and wrote a dedicated bylaw setting standards for setbacks, noise, and review.
Property rights cut both ways
Conservatives believe in the right of a landowner to do what they want with their land, and that belief is sound. But property rights have always run both directions. The farmer next door has rights too, and so does the community that has to live with the traffic, the noise, the water draw, and the loss of soil that took ten thousand years to build. A bedrock principle is not violated when a county weighs all of those interests and says no. That is the principle working as intended.
Local councils should hold the pen
The real danger is not a county saying no. It is a future where the province decides these projects are too important to leave to local people and starts overriding municipal land-use decisions from Edmonton. Albertans of all people should recoil at that. The county council, elected by the people who farm and live there, is the right body to weigh a project against the land it sits on. Red Deer County looked at its own situation and said yes. Rocky View looked at its and said no. Both were legitimate because both were local.
A finite asset deserves a real test
Alberta’s farmland is not making a comeback once it is gone, any more than a town gets its say back after the fact. That argues for a simple rule. Steer these projects toward industrial land, brownfields, and sites where the soil is poor, and make any move onto prime agricultural ground clear a high bar with the neighbours in the room. Pair that with honest limits on how much water a project can pull, and Alberta can welcome the industry without trading away the thing that made rural Alberta rural in the first place.
Should a data centre ever be allowed to pave prime farmland when poorer industrial land sits empty a few concessions over?
