800 acres of Devon farmland has just been wiped...
Not by flooding…
Not by a drought...
But by this…
Welcome to Britain's newest hyperscale AI data centre, set to be the biggest in Europe, sitting slap bang in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
(For context, it’s bigger than the actual town next to it.)
The worst part is, Nobody in Devon knew this was coming until it was basically a done deal.
And this is not a one-off…
Erin Brockovich (yes, THAT Erin Brockovich, the one who took down a utility giant over poisoned water) has spent the last few months investigating data centres going up all over the US.
Her findings? Communities are being kept in the dark deliberately.
She said projects are being "shoved down their throat in secrecy", with residents only finding out at the proposal stage, by which point local officials are already bound by NDAs and can't say much of anything.
Some projects even get presented as ordinary warehouses rather than data centres, so nobody asks questions until it's too late.
Looks like this is exactly what has happened in Devon.
Now let's talk resources, because this is where it gets serious…
A single large data centre can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day just to keep servers cool. That's roughly what an entire town of 50,000 people uses.
Multiply that by thousands of these things going up across the world, all fighting for the same water, land and power grids we rely on to grow food.
Frankly, it's appalling and speaks VOLUMES about the hypocritical narratives we’re fed.
Farmers have been dragged through the mud.
Cows blamed for climate change. For water usage.
Blamed for basically everything wrong with the planet.
Meanwhile, a data centre that guzzles millions of litres of water and enough electricity to power a small city gets passes through with barely a whisper...
...on 850 acres of Britain's most PRODUCTIVE farmland.
Make it make sense!
The government's only NOW launching an "inquiry" into how much water these things actually use.
After approving it.
Cool, cool, very proactive 👍
Here's the thing that worries us…
For most people, this kind of story doesn't even register.
"Farmland, data centres, whatever. I'm not a farmer. I just go to the supermarket and get on with my life."
And let’s be honest, some people think caring where your food comes from is a bit... precious. A bit hippie dippy.
Something for people with allotments and sourdough starters, not normal, busy people with actual lives to run.
And that's exactly the problem.
Because most people have no idea how much is quietly disappearing while they're not looking…
800 acres of Devon farmland, gone, and barely anyone outside of Devon even heard about it.
Multiply that by data centres going up all over the world, all fighting for the same land, water and power that is used to grow food.
Nobody's shouting about it because most people genuinely don't grasp the scale of what's happening.
It's not that people don't care.
It's that this stuff happens quietly, while everyone's busy living their lives.
By the time it's obvious, the land's already gone.
This is our mission at APE. We’re here trying to help people understand that food security isn't abstract.
All of you reading this get it.
You all see it.
So please share this email with anyone you think needs to know about this.
Post about it on socials.
Keep supporting real farms.
While we still have the land to grow it on.
- The APE team
P.S
There are several petitions going around, we’ll link a few below, that are actively trying to fight the building of UK-based data centres. We also encourage you to research what is happening locally and other ways that you can support your community, farmers and land preservation. And please reach out to us as you learn more too!
>> Say no to North Devon data campus and battery storage petition
>> Prevent the building of 13,000sq ft data centre in Canterbury
>> Stop Dirty Data Centres Global Action Plan UK Petition
There is also a UK-based movement called Opposition to Data Centres in the UK which have 18 active petitions.