They don't even create that many jobs like a factory for instance so we can say the mass employment offsets the environmental damage.
This is true, but don't forget a _lot_ of agriculture feeds _animals_ that we in turn eat. If you want to make optimal use of land for human needs, most modern agriculture is not that.
There's no problem the more conventional practice of letting animals graze the majority of the year. If we didn't use those fields to feed and eat the animals, the grass would turn into CO2 and methane anyway. Or turn into boring forests.
Not everything has to be optimal. That thinking leads to Thanos' snap. People generally enjoy meat. They also enjoy the landscape farmers created.
We have vastly more arable land than is needed to keep people from starving, even when used inefficiently to produce things like cattle feed.
I have friends with farms and agricultural businesses in Italy. A lot of agricultural land is no longer cultivated by the families that own it because market prices are well below the cost of production in Italy.
compared to something like a car factory, data centers do not provide that many jobs.
(and the jobs are of significantly different nature)
Where have I heard this before?
These purpose built DCs in the recent AI craze doesn't. A handful of security guys, handful of technicians and that's pretty much it