MACY – Call it a battle between pigs and produce.
At least, that’s how Ray Reichard sees it.
In 2012, he and his wife started installing greenhouses outside their farmhouse in rural Miami County growing a variety of flowers and vegetables. They named their new business R&C Greenhouse & Produce.
Today, the couple operates four greenhouses on their property. Reichard said this year they’ve got around $50,000 worth of plants and supplies tied up in the operation.
Most of their business comes from area farmers markets, but this year they’ve decided to begin a push to increase the onsite sales of their produce to boost profits.
But Reichard said he now believes his entire operation is in jeopardy.
Last month, he received a letter that a nearby farm was planning to build two new hog barns about a quarter mile southwest of his house and business.
The proposal for one of the new barns came from Leedy Farms, which is owned and operated by Chris Leedy, who lives a couple of miles from Reichard. The second barn is being proposed by Pine Ridge Pork, which is operated by Leedy’s son in-law.
In total, the barns could house up to 9,200 pigs.
Reichard said when he learned about the proposal, he knew his greenhouse business was in trouble. His biggest concern? The smell.
That’s something Reichard knows about first hand. When he isn’t operating his business, he works for a hog farmer with barns located about four miles from his house.
Reichard said the smell of hogs can be overpowering, and has an uncanny ability to stick to things. If the new barns are built so near to his greenhouses, he worries the plants will carry the odor with them when he takes them to farmers markets.
On top of that, Reichard said, he believes their push to have more people buy directly from their greenhouses doesn’t have a chance of succeeding, since nobody wants to visit a place that smells like pigs.
“If they build, I’m closing. There ain’t no ifs, ands or buts about it,” he said. “If the plants smell, nobody is going to buy them. I don’t want to put in $40,000 worth of plants in these greenhouses and nobody buys them.”
Chuck Smith, who lives less than two miles from the Reichards, agreed with his neighbor. He lives around 1,000 feet from a hog barn built by Pine Ridge Pork in 2011, and the smell is sometimes unbearable.
“It’s terrible,” Smith said. “If I get up in the morning and I have something planned to do outside and it smells bad, I get up and leave … I’ve stuck it out, but a lot of people have left because of these operations.”
But Leedy sees the situation differently. He said in his view, he’s trying to make a living just like his neighbor.
Leedy said he started farming in northern Miami County in 1980. In 2011, his son in-law branched out into hog farming with the construction of their first barn, which is the one Smith lives by.
That operation has done well, so they’ve now decided to build two more. He said it’s an operation in which he and his son in-law build the facilities, but the swine are owned by an outside company. The two will raise the pigs, and once they’re ready for slaughter, the animals will be trucked off to a plant in Delphi.
The new pig barns would expand an already booming pork industry in Miami County.
According to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the county currently has 44 regulated swine operations that in total house more than 15,000 pigs. That makes it one of the top 11 counties in the state for the number of hog farms.
In fact, there have been more new permits issued statewide for pig farms than for any other animal since 1990, according to IDEM, making Indiana the fifth largest pork producer in the country.
Leedy said with such a demand for pork, it makes sense to tap into the market. But despite the economic incentives, he knows putting up hog barns isn’t popular with neighbors. He said he experienced that with the first barn they built in 2011, which received push back from residents in the area.
“It was a big mess,” Leedy said.
It’s the same story with the new barns. Reichard and Smith said they have both filed formal complaints with IDEM against the proposed pig operation. They said in addition to that, 11 residents who will live by the barns if they receive approval have had their water tested. Smith said they want to establish a baseline for their water quality so they can prove if it becomes polluted because of the hog operation.
Reichard said he’s not against building hog barns in the area. He works at one, after all. He said his biggest complaint is the location, and the fact that he believes it will jeopardize his greenhouse business.
“It’s all about the location,” he said. “I’ve got an established business, and now he’s coming in and ruining my business just so he can expand. If I didn’t have the greenhouse business, I probably wouldn’t mind any of this. I wouldn’t like the smell, but I wouldn’t complain.”
But those kinds of concerns have little weight when IDEM considers granting a building permit for hog operations, said Barry Sneedy, a public information officer with the agency.
He said when it comes to issuing a permit, IDEM’s only concern is making sure the operation meets all the environmental rules and regulations set forth by state and federal code.
And those rules don’t say anything about containing the smell.
“All we can consider are the statutes and rules,” Sneedy said. “Right now, there’s not a rule or statute that talks about its impact on neighbors.”
But that doesn’t mean the county can’t intervene.
Miami County commissioners have heard a string of complaints in the last two months about the new hog barns going up, and said they’re considering an ordinance that would require new swine operations to plant trees around the barns to block the smell from spreading to neighboring houses.
County Zoning Administrator Tammy Gamble said she’s currently researching the issue to potentially draft the ordinance.
IDEM has yet to approve the permits for the two new hog barns, citing a number of deficiencies in their applications, including building materials, design plans and setbacks.
Once Leedy and his son-in law correct the deficiencies, IDEM has 90 days to review and issue its ruling on whether to approve or deny the project.
Leedy said he knows from experience that IDEM won’t approve the barns if they aren’t up to code, and that’s a big reason why he believes neighbors shouldn’t worry about environmental issues with the hog operation.
“Their regulations are very strict,” he said. “If one thing isn’t right, they will deny my permit.”
But even if the project does receive IDEM’s approval, Leedy said, that won’t do much to alleviate the complaints from his neighbors.
“It’s a lose-lose situation for me,” he said. “No matter what I do, I’m going to come out the bad guy.”