Where Have All The Prairies Gone

There was once in our town, a serene beautiful prairie,

A place where the birds and butterflies would wander freely,

During the day, migrating and resident fowls sang merrily,

And under the cloak of darkness at night, crickets chirped eerily.

Then one fateful summer day, technology rolled into town,

Cranes and caterpillars invaded the pristine meadows’ ground,

Not the bird cranes, nor larval-form-butterfly caterpillars,

But construction equipments that erect buildings and pillars.

Soon the grassland was transformed into a concrete jungle,

Silence was drowned with hum of motors and constant hustle,

Perpetual flood lights chased away the dark of the night,

For where the prairie was, a sprawling datacenter is now on site.

But this story is true to many of our small rural counties,

One by one, in the name of progress, we’re losing our prairies,

Where have all the prairies gone? Gone to tech giants everyone!

Oh, when will we ever learn, or will we ever learn?

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*Iowa—specifically the Des Moines metro area—has emerged as a major data center hub in the United States, driven by massive investments from tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple. Iowa hosts over 100 data centers.

**photo of datacenter in Council Bluffs, Iowa (source: Google)