Willie Nelson has spoken out against the construction of data centers across the United States and issued a statement encouraging citizens to fight the proliferation of facilities that “only destroy the environment around them.”

The country legend posted an open letter on social media describing how he grew up in Abbott, Texas, and that the community needs to “fight the data centers encroaching on our land.”

“The last thing we need is a noisy, water-stealing, light-polluting data center anywhere near our (or any other) city,” he wrote. “The strength of rural America has never come from large industrial footprints. It comes from generations of people, open spaces, local businesses, and a connection to the land. All of America deserves a thoughtful administration that doesn’t steal farmland (where our essential shared foods are grown) and the livelihoods of small family farmers, and not data centers that only destroy the environment around them.”

He ended with a motivating word for Americans to fight back: “He who controls food and water controls the masses. Let us not allow our own demise or give up control over the resources needed in the United States and especially in Abbott.”

Data centers have drawn strong backlash in recent years over concerns both about their political implications and their adverse effects on the environment and local communities. In Nelson’s native Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently called for a ban on data center development in rural neighborhoods after previously proposing regulations for data centers to add new power generation to the grid and reuse their own water, among other guidelines.

Nelson himself has long been an environmentalist and has raised more than $70 million through Farm Aid to help rural farmers and millions more for disaster relief and veterans. He also supports Feeding America and the American Red Cross, among other philanthropic activities.