Farmer rejects $15 million data center offer: ‘It breaks my heart … the rest of every square inch is going to get built on’

Instead, 86-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh sold development rights for less than $2 million to a trust that will preserve his land. “I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told the TV station on Monday. “That was the bottom line. It really wasn’t so much the economic end of it. I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.” After farming for more than six decades in Silver Spring Township, which is outside Harrisburg, Raudabaugh recalled being offered $60,000 per acre by the developers for his 261 acres—amounting to $15.7 million. But in December, the Lancaster Farmland Trust bought…