Iceland's prime minister plans to prioritize food security over Bitcoin data centers.

The comments come after the same country's president has pitched the nation as a home for artificial intelligence data centers. The president is the head of state, while the prime minister is the head of government.

“It’s not exactly easy to be a farmer in Iceland. It’s not exactly great fields. You know, we have glaciers covering a large part of the country,” prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir told the Financial Times.

"But it’s an important part of our strategy for security and safety in this world."

She added: "Bitcoin is an issue worldwide... but data centers in Iceland use a significant share of our green energy."

The country plans to "prioritize" green industries to achieve carbon neutrality. “Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, which use a lot of our energy, are not part of that mission," she said.

Bitcoin data centers, lured by cheap power and cold temperatures, have sprung up around Iceland. There, they consume more power than the nation's 375,000 citizens.

At the same time, Icelandic fish-processing plants were forced to use oil and diesel generators over the winter due to grid constraints.

DCD visited Iceland late last year, where the president told us that "data centers are here to stay," and said that AI companies should build in the country. Iceland has the potential for significant hydro, geothermal, and wind power - but has been slow to build out infrastructure.

"We have more demand than we can deliver," Haraldur Hallgrímsson, director of business development at state-owned power company Landsvirkjun, told DCD.