{"id":120761,"date":"2026-02-22T21:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T21:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/120761\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T21:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T21:13:07","slug":"pennsylvania-farmer-turns-down-15-million-offer-for-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/120761\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Farmer Turns Down $15 Million Offer For Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

A farmer from Pennsylvania has turned down an offer on his property that would have made him a multimillionaire.<\/p>\n

Mervin Raudabaugh, 86, was offered $15 million for 261 acres of land by a data center developer. He politely declined and decided to sell development rights to the Lancaster Farmland Trust (LFT), a nonprofit that will make sure his land is only ever used for farming.<\/p>\n

“It was my life,” Raudabaugh told Fox43 News in the video below about why he didn\u2019t want to sell the rights to the farmland to developers. “I told [the data center company] no, I was not interested in destroying my farms.<\/p>\n

Raudabaugh said that the data center developer was relentless in trying to convince him to sell his rights. <\/p>\n

“These people have hounded the living daylights out of me,” Raudabaugh said, according to Realtor.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to LFT CEO Jeff Swineheart, employees for the data center developer \u201cwalk up farm lanes and knock on doors, and if they get a no, they come back again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raudabaugh sold his rights for $2 million to LFT, a nonprofit that ensures his land will be preserved. If it\u2019s sold in the future, it will only be to someone who uses it for agricultural purposes.<\/p>\n

The LFT has been important for preserving land in Pennsylvania since it was founded in 1988. The organization stewards over 38,310 acres with 618 conservation easements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A farmer from Pennsylvania has turned down an offer on his property that would have made him a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-120761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}