Farm’s Neighbors Want Flies to Buzz Off

Life used to be good for Larry Harder, a corn and soybean farmer who also raises cattle.

After a hard day’s work on the farm he loves, Harder would head to the barn to check on his cattle. He’d take along his sons--Jim, 14, and Phil, 16. The barn became a place for the three to unwind and catch up.

Harder doesn’t spend much time in his barn anymore. He doesn’t spend much time outdoors, he says, not since AgriGeneral Company L.P. opened an egg farm near his home.

The reason? Flies.

Hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions.

“It has made me a prisoner in my house,” said Harder, 39, who lives half a mile from AgriGeneral’s egg farm in LaRue, which has 2.5 million hens.

“I come home at night and my house is covered with flies. We can’t eat it’s so bad.”

Harder is not alone. Most of the families have lived for generations in this rural community 80 miles south of Toledo. But many are talking about leaving.

“I don’t have a choice. We have to get out of here,” said Dick Faye, who is trying to sell his farm a mile down the road from the egg farm.

“If you want to enjoy life, you don’t want to live around here. This community is dying.”

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When AgriGeneral announced plans to build egg farms in Ohio several years ago, the company said they would create jobs and boost the economy.

Many residents opposed the plan, saying the smell, flies and possible water pollution from manure runoff would ruin their quality of life. They also complained the megafarms would force small family farms out of business.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency last year approved the LaRue egg farm, which generates 21,000 tons of manure a year. It opened in September. A second farm also operates in Croton, about 25 miles northeast of Columbus.

AgriGeneral also plans to build two pullet farms, each housing 925,000 pullets; an egg farm in Marseilles with 2.5 million hens; another egg farm in LaRue with 2.65 million hens and a feed mill. All of the operations will be within a 20-mile radius.

The flies appeared in Mount Victory in late February. By May, residents annoyed by the unwanted bugs began complaining to the EPA.

People said they could not eat or sleep because flies had swarmed all over their homes--inside and out. A local church canceled services because of the flies.

AgriGeneral said the flies were not coming from the egg farm.

It hired an entomologist, Ralph Williams, who told local officials, the EPA and residents that only a few flies had migrated from the egg farm. And those flies, he said, only travel up to a mile from the farm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, however, has said flies, which carry dozens of diseases that cause gastrointestinal distress and other ailments, can travel six to 20 miles.

AgriGeneral began attacking the problem in June. They put insects that eat fly eggs into the manure pits, where flies lay eggs. The company also began aerial spraying, using a fly-card monitoring system and baits, and inspecting the manure pits for water leaks every week.

But the company contended in a June 14 letter to the EPA that AgriGeneral has no jurisdiction over fly complaints.

“We feel that our poultry farm contributes many less flies to the area than those from all of the uncovered manure present in our neighborhood, especially in this unusually wet season,” wrote AgriGeneral President Marcus Pohlmann.

AgriGeneral spokeswoman Amy Bast said the company cares about being a good neighbor.

“They have shown good faith by doing seven or eight things to alleviate the problem,” Bast said.

John Stevenson, the EPA’s agricultural specialist, said an unusually wet spring contributed to the fly problem. He said the EPA has no power to force AgriGeneral to address the fly problem.

“They are taking measures,” he said.

Alice and Dick Faye, leaders of Concerned Citizens of Central Ohio, a three-county group opposed to the farms, love to spend time outdoors. They held picnics on their Croton farm, where they raised their five sons.

Then the flies came. Now the Fayes are moving.

Residents of Croton have complained for years about flies, which they say come from AgriGeneral’s nearby egg farm.

“It’s sad because I have so many memories here. But this is what I’m living with,” Alice Faye said, pointing to flies flitting on and off her kitchen counter.

“I’m just tired.”

So is Barbara Miller, an Amish woman who lives next to the egg farm with her husband, Marvin. She glances at a fly strip covered with thousands of dead flies.

“It is bad. Real bad,” she said. “They would just swarm all over you. They would hit you in the face when you were in the barns.”

AgriGeneral gave her a check for $35 for spraying, she said. She has not cashed it.

Harder says that even though he moved his cattle eight miles away to escape the flies, they have developed respiratory problems. Flies lay eggs in calves’ wounds and the calves’ growth has been stunted.

AgriGeneral has been talking to Harder about a possible settlement.

On a recent day, Harder checked his calves in their new barn. The animals came up to him and he petted them gently. Some were wheezing.

He cradled the head of a sick calf, which his sons were raising as a 4-H Club project. Harder turned his head away and began crying.

“He’s so sick. So sick. Look what they’ve done,” Harder sobbed.