An 80-year-old farmer in Clearcreek Township has turned one acre of her hayfield into a giant piece of protest art, plowed and planted to send a message to the data-center industry eyeing Ohio farmland. The earthwork sits off Bunnell Hill Road, about 30 miles north of downtown Cincinnati, and depicts the outline of Ohio, a farmer, a cow and a sign opposing the sale of farmland to data centers.
Leslie Nogle, who has owned the farmland for 55 years, worked with earthwork artist Stan Herd to create the piece, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Herd is an earthwork artist. He flew to Ohio from Peru, where he had been working on a mural depicting the pope, after a group called Data Center Payoffs asked him to create an earthwork in the state.
Herd initially considered land in Columbus before settling on southwest Ohio after falling for Cincinnati, the Enquirer reported. The Warren County Democratic Party connected him with Nogle, and Herd and an eight-person team made four trips to her farm to build the work, creating the outline by mowing and weed-whacking the field, then filling in letters, a barn and a farm scene with mulch, corn and other natural materials. Organizer Bethe Goldenfield said people across political divisions often agree about data centers.
A Rally and a Warning From a Nearby Congressman
Activists unveiled the field art on October 24 at a No Data Centers/Save Our Land rally, where Greg Landsman made an appearance, per the Enquirer's reporting. Trenton and Wilmington — both closer to active proposals — are already battling developers seeking farmland. A proposed data center near Trenton sits about 20 miles from her farm, according to the Enquirer and WCPO.
In Wilmington, voters will decide four referendums on whether to uphold or reject rezoning for a data-center project, while the Ohio Supreme Court has already struck down a separate ballot initiative that would have let Wilmington residents sue data centers over zoning violations, per the Enquirer.
A Statewide Vote Just Days Away
The Warren County earthwork lands just before an unusually crowded Election Day for the issue. Voters in 18 Ohio municipalities and townships will decide the future of data centers in their communities, according to the Ohio Capital Journal. Nine of those petitions — in Conneaut, Defiance, Granville, Oregon, Pataskala, Piqua, Sunbury, Trenton and Upper Sandusky — mirror a statewide push to ban data centers that draw more than 25 megawatts, and 14 of the 18 communities with petitions have already received formal development proposals, the outlet reported.
Clearcreek Township itself adopted a one-year moratorium on data-center permits in July, according to WDTN, and the city of Dayton passed a zoning change in June barring the facilities altogether. Inside Climate News counts 21 Ohio ballot measures tied to data centers overall, with 10 communities set to vote on local restrictions, and reports that opponents are gathering signatures for a statewide measure that could reach voters in 2027. Nationally, about 40 local data-center ballot measures are counted across seven states for 2026.
Jobs and Tax Dollars Versus Farmland and Water
The fight is playing out against a backdrop of genuinely rapid growth. Ohio drew tech companies with cheap land, existing energy infrastructure and tax breaks, fueling what NPR described as some of the fastest data-center growth in the country — including 1,000 acres of farmland and trees in Mt. Orab that property records show were sold to a developer in 2024 and 2025. The Ohio Capital Journal cited an April Pew Research Center analysis ranking Ohio fourth in the nation for operational data centers.
Supporters point to real economic upside. NPR reports that data centers bring considerable tax revenue, money for schools, numerous construction jobs and a smaller number of permanent jobs to host communities.
A Bowling Green State University poll found similar support for a moratorium.
Herd's Earthwork Art
Industry representatives have pushed back on the environmental concerns driving ballots like Ohio's. Meta has said it aims to be a good operational, economic and community neighbor in the state, Inside Climate News reported, while an Amazon Web Services executive, Craig Sundstrom, has said one of the company's data centers uses less water annually than a few car washes. For Nogle, the argument comes down to who gets a say before the land changes hands — a question Clearcreek Township's hayfield now puts to anyone flying overhead.
