“The thing I worry about the most is with anything like this. I was thinking about this with electric vehicles. It's the gold rush mentality of vacuum up as much of the resources to complete the project as we know it right now. And then down the road the thing evolves, it becomes more streamlined, more efficient. Well, we used up half or more of the resources we need to do the job anyway in the first iteration, and now we're behind the eight ball.”
The Prairie Farm Podcast · October 2026
Context
The group was debating whether to oppose data centers or engage with them. McCollum raises his worry that early, resource-hungry versions of a technology get overbuilt before more efficient ones arrive, comparing it to electric vehicles.
Transcript
…transistors into a tiny little chip. Yeah. And so Silicon Valley founded in Grinnell. I'm dead serious. It was. And now data centers are knocking and we're angry about it. And that's okay. You're allowed to be angry. You're allowed. Just be nuanced about it. Be nuanced about it. Yeah, you can have
complex feelings. The attitude of just
crossing your arms and turning your back just doesn't move the needle at all. It's a bigger holdup. And the thing I worry about the most is with anything like this. I was thinking about this with like electric cars, electric vehicles and stuff like that. It's the gold rush mentality of vacuum up as much of the resources to complete the project as we know it right now. And then down the road, as you say, the thing evolves, it becomes more streamlined. It becomes more efficient. Well, we used up, you know, half or more of the resources we need to do the job anyway in the first iteration of whatever it is we're tackling. And now we're behind that eight bowl.
Well, and that's, you know, you're the second person that's brought this up to me. And I had a conversation on Friday with someone and we were talking about this and they're in the same space. And it's like, okay, instead of being a more, instead of doing a moratorium or being an anti-data center…
Yeah. I mean, if we're not careful, farming will just be run by data centers. You know, it'll just be autonomous autonomous vehicles. And I mean, we are at a theme watershed and the winner of the startup competition was a self-driving robot that goes around and puts down nitrogen. Do you remember…
I feel like I have to like preface this a little bit because you're going to be like, the takeaway, everyone's going to be like, Great Outdoors Foundation is funding nitrogen.
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