KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A new kind of farm is popping up. Tucked away on small plots on America's back roads, it cultivates no soil or seed.

Rather, it nurtures curiosities about everything from porn to pinochle expressed in a nearly endless sequence of 1s and 0s queried from desktops, laptops and iPhones around the globe.

The computer server farm — huge banks of computer servers doing the heavy-lifting logic of Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon — is bringing bits of Silicon Valley to places like Pryor, Okla., and Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Moving inland means quicker connections by getting closer to customers. Spreading hubs across the continent makes networks more dependable. And tax breaks await.

But server farms also guzzle electricity, the way computer technicians gulp Red Bull. The farms are massive, up to football-field-sized buildings filled with racks of servers.

So finding places where the light bill is, well, lighter goes a long way toward pleasing stockholders.

"If you can make the machines use power 5 percent more efficiently, that could save tens of millions of dollars," said Dan Wallach, a Rice University computer science professor.

Consider Google's decision to plop down server farms on the outskirts of Pryor and Council Bluffs — the latest expansions from its original hub in California. Both sites come with tax abatements that will save millions. And by sitting 1,000 miles from another new server farm that the company has planted on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon, the search engine service lowers the chances that a West Coast brownout will dash your ability to Google your blind date.

Similarly, diversifying locations makes Google's network more stable, as sabotage or natural disaster in a single location will have less impact.

Google says it has built five server farms in the U.S. and dozens around the world.

It helps that the price is right. Google's corporate headquarters sit in Mountain View, Calif. The average industrial electrical rate in the Golden State runs about 9 cents per kilowatt hour. In Iowa and Oklahoma, it's between 4 and 5.5 cents.

"Google is ... not the type of industry that is really dependent on location, since its product is Internet-based," said Grand River spokesman Justin Alberty. "The real factors in choosing a location tend to be land, water and electricity."

Server farms, also referred to as data centers by the industry, are also becoming more common with the growth of "cloud computing." The term refers to companies building massive computing power and then renting that capacity out to other firms. Amazon, for one, sells not just books, but time on its servers to run Web sites or store electronic records.

In that way, computing is starting to look like the next utility. Some analysts even see consumers buying less highly powered personal computers in the future and relying on firms like Google to fire up the necessary microprocessors when the demand requires.

Even the Microsoft has just launched a data storage and Web software system called Live Mesh. It's the company's late entry into cloud computing.

That consolidation of data processing power is becoming a powerful industry trend. Last year, Sun Microsystems unveiled modular units designed for cloud computing and fitted into 20-foot shipping containers. This month, IBM introduced the iDataPlex with claims that it squeezes twice as many computers in the same space as other systems and runs on 40 percent less power.

Server farms can grow huge, consuming enough electricity to power more than 20,000 American homes.

With perhaps 100,000 pizza -box-sized machines, the buildings are filled with the constant sound of fans blowing over the processors.

Cooling costs — yet more energy consumption — can rival the electricity demand to run the computers.

In that way, even your Google search has a carbon footprint. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that server farms consume at least 1.5 percent of all U.S. energy.