NEWTON TWP. — Republican gubernatorial candidate Stacy Garrity called for protecting Pennsylvania farmland from data center development Thursday while hosting an agriculture roundtable in Lackawanna County.
Joined by local farmers and GOP elected officials at Eckel Farms in Newton Twp., Garrity, the state treasurer running an underdog campaign against incumbent Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, addressed artificial intelligence data centers in the county that’s become a hotbed for proposals to build them and related infrastructure. Those proposals in Archbald and elsewhere have fueled an unprecedented bipartisan opposition movement locally and made the data center issue particularly politically potent here.
Pennsylvania Treasurer and candiate for governor Stacy Garrity listens to Keith Eckel, owner of Eckel Farms, during a roundtable discussion on agricultural topics at Eckel’s farm in Newton Twp. Thursday, July 30, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Garrity’s event in Newton Twp. came after a developer recently purchased hundreds of acres of conservation and agricultural land in neighboring Ransom Twp. for potential data center development. Mudiita Land Venture LLC, a Carbon County firm with a parent company in New Jersey, spent $2.4 million on 528.6 acres south of Ransom Road and west of South Keyser Avenue. A now-deleted website for an affiliated company previously advertised the land for a sprawling data center campus, though current plans for the land are unclear.
Other developers have also proposed data centers along Newton Road in both Newton and Ransom townships.
Garrity, who’s called for a pause on data center development, said Thursday there are more appropriate places to build them than on agricultural land.
“What’s concerning is that we have so many brownfield sites, we have so many industrial sites that have infrastructure that would be … appropriate (for data centers), but we need to make sure ratepayers are protected, communities are protected, and there’s a lot of common-sense ways to do that,” she said. “But I hate to see our precious farmland given up for data centers because we do have so many other available areas and we already have 400,000 I think acres that’s foreign owned, so we really need to do everything we can to preserve our farmland.”
Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity hosts a roundtable discussion on agriculture at Eckel Farms in Newton Twp. Thursday, July 30, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
A Garrity administration would pause future development so local communities can understand the impact of data centers, give local residents “final say” over such development and prioritize brownfields for potential development to limit problems in neighborhoods, among other steps, per a list of policy initiatives her campaign provided.
The local event came as Garrity works to narrow the gap between her and Shapiro reflected in statewide polling. A Quinnipiac University poll released in mid-July, for example, showed Shapiro leading Garrity 53% to 40% in the governor’s race. That’s slightly closer than in February, when Quinnipiac’s poll showed the incumbent Democrat up 55% to 37%.
The July Quinnipiac poll also notes 74% of voters say they would oppose building an AI data center in their community, up from 68% in February, suggesting the anti-data center movement is gaining momentum here and elsewhere.
Garrity elaborated on the need to safeguard farmland from data center development after Republican Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak, who’d earlier touted the success of farmland preservation efforts in the county, expressed concern that financially struggling farmers might be convinced to sell to data center developers offering large sums for their land. The Agricultural Land Preservation Easement Purchase Program that Chermak touted, administered here by the Lackawanna County Conservation District, pays county farmers on a per-acre basis for easements that limit their land’s future use to farming and agriculture and has preserved more than 6,600 acres of farmland in the county since its launch in 1994.
Local farmers Dan Naylor, Jim Barbour, and Tim Jaggars answer questions during the agricultural roundtable hosted by state Treasurer Stacy Garrity at Eckel Farms in Newton Twp. Thursday, July 30, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Eckel Farms owner Keith Eckel, a former Pennsylvania Farm Bureau president, called for more state funding for farmland preservation.
“Today, Pennsylvania has more acres of farmland preserved and more farms preserved than anywhere in this nation, and what we have to focus on is continuing to make certain that we fund those programs to get the job done,” he said. “Farmers will do everything they can to keep their land, but sometimes when they are economically pressed to the bone — and it will be the last thing that they give up — they have to sell. And so adequate funding for farmland preservation is key.”
In a press release Friday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party accused Garrity of having a “long record” of supporting data center development, including in rural areas.
On the data center front, Shapiro traveled to Archbald in May to unveil his administration’s full release of the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development, or GRID, standards that require data center developers to comply with stricter guidelines to receive state support. While GRID participation isn’t mandatory, the program incentivizes developers with tax benefits and faster permitting, and Shapiro has said it will be nearly impossible to develop data centers without participating.
Many local data center opponents skeptical of the GRID standards continue to hold Shapiro’s earlier support for data center development, including Amazon’s plan to invest at least $20 billion to build data center campuses in Pennsylvania, against him.
In a statement, state Democratic Party spokesperson Ava Pitruzzello called Garrity’s campaign promises “untrustworthy” and accused her of being “100% supportive of the reckless tariffs that have hurt farmers and the War in Iran that’s driving up costs on everything from fuel to fertilizer.”
“Garrity is a rubber stamp for the disastrous policies hurting Pennsylvania agriculture, and she will never stand up to the Trump Administration — even when it makes life harder for farmers,” Pitruzzello said.
Garrity didn’t specifically address Trump’s tariffs or the Iran war during Thursday’s roundtable, but said at a different event earlier this week that she “would probably do tariffs a little bit differently,” according to PennLive. Eckel reiterated Thursday the pressure that escalating fertilizer costs have put on farmers, and said anything that could be done to facilitate more domestic fertilizer production would be critically important.
Other of Garrity’s agriculture-related goals include permitting, regulatory and inheritance-tax reform, prohibiting foreign entities from purchasing Pennsylvania farmland and doubling the number of Future Farmers of America chapters in Pennsylvania schools.
“I will prioritize Pennsylvania agriculture because I know firsthand the impact you have on our communities, and … supporting Pennsylvania family farms will be a priority of my administration,” she said.