By David Neff

Last month the State of Ohio Agriculture Committee of the House of Representatives heard proponents for HB175.  One of our own local council persons Walter Genutis had the honor to go to Columbus and testify to the committee in support of the passage of this State legislation.

HB175 is a Bill to amend sections 303.21 and 519.21 and to enact section 901.60 of the Ohio Revised Code to allow an owner of residential property to keep, harbor, breed, or maintain small livestock on the property, and to prohibit zoning authorities from regulating certain agricultural activities conducted on residential property for noncommercial purposes.

Mr. Genutis was kind enough to share the text of his statement to the State Committee with us here at the Bedford Tribune so we are going to share it with you.

“My name is Walter Genutis and I am a city council member in the City of Bedford, Ohio in NE Ohio in Cuyahoga County.  Please consider favorably our plight to provide our families the best unadulterated, nutrient-dense, and most inexpensive food available – homegrown products from our own hands on our own land.

I live in a city identified as a food desert by our County Board  of Health.  Our area has been designated as a target area. And I have been working with a very motivated staff from the Board of Health to help whatever can de done to establish food access through various agencies, including Health Improvement Partnership Cuyahoga, Creating Heathy Communities, and Supermarket Access and Food Policy Coalition initiatives. These people get it. Their knowledge is evidence-based, not wishful thinking.  My local government would never admit our town is a food desert. They think  anyone can just hop in their car and go to the grocery store and buy whatever they want.  Our four-city school district is comprised of a population of approximatley 29,000 residents in an area spanning over 20 sq. miles. There is just a single grocery store, whose parent company, incidentally, has already closed two other stores in our community, citing the lack of a qualified local workforce.

I am also an organic food grower. It has become my vocation since I lost my job of 34 years at Ben Venue Labs in Bedford, Ohio. Our city lost its largest employer. I work on an organic farm in neighboring Geauga County in Bainbridge, Ohio.  I have taken to the nationwide food movement with a great passion and much studying of both horticulture and health.

I am uniquely aware of the difficulties of accessing pure, unadulterated food.  I can tell you it is simply immensely scarce.  From a 2-1/2 acre plot each week throughout the summer we sell thousands of dollars of vegetables and organic grass-fed beef and organic maple syrup -and eggs- to a very tiny splinter of Greater Cleveland’s population at the Shaker Square Farm Market, to a very special demographic group of highly-educated, well-heeled professionals who have the wherewithal to buy it. And even though I work in 100 degree temperatures pulling weeds all day on my hands and knees, in 350’ long rows, where a person on the other end looks about a 1/4” tall, I can’t even afford to buy the food that I am growing. That Saturday morning farmer’s market is over 10 miles from my house and it’s the nearest one. We planted over 5,000 garlics and I still had to plant garlic at home because it does not belong to me.

As you know, we live in a state where agriculture is the #1 industry, 13th in sales. Over 6.6 million acres are planted in grains and hay and soybeans, but only a scant 49,000 acres are planted in fruits and vegetables. Almost the entire state’s crop production is used to feed animals. While we live in one of the largest hardwood forests, with abundant fertile soil, in the largest freshwater eco-system on the planet Earth, the food in the grocery stores comes from on average 1,500 miles away.

Many of you may have concerns about this HB175 as an erosion of the rightful principles of Home Rule. I am both sympathetic and torn by this notion, as a city council member, and I’d like to explain why.

Some years ago, but in recent history, a man fell out-of-favor with his neighbor, his yard overgrown, messy, a disabled vehicle, and chickens.  This dispute ensued and the City confiscated the chickens and charged him with a minor misdemeanor per city ordinance. Well, he took the matter to court with a lawsuit and claimed that the city ordinance violates the U.S. Constitution and Ohio Constitution. This caused a great commotion in our town with a lot of bad press and he became known as the Chicken Man. He lost the case in count and eventually lost the appeal also. His problems with the City didn’t end there. His neighbor became the Mayor and the city pursued every ordinance violation imaginable, even charging him for when his dogs got loose. In a continuous string of actions, his bad luck and hard feelings prevailed to the point the City condemned his dwelling and eventually tore-down his house leaving him homeless and he wanders about. But if you were to ever bring-up talk of chickens in our town, it will always be associated with this man, and all the ill thoughts of him throughout town.

Further one day, a city worker in City Hall complained she didn’t like the corn stalks in her neighbors yard. City officials said, fine, we’ll just write a law and now in our codified ordinances, in the Chapter titled Safety, Health, and Sanitation under Noxious Weeds one sentence was added, no vegetables beyond the front building line.

That day in 1997, my vegetable garden became illegal because my house sets way back along a ravine and there’s no other place for a garden the way my property is configured.  My family has been growing food in this town for 100 years. My garden is now illegal and my neighbor’s also alongside his house, which has been there my whole life, and along with everyone else who puts a couple tomato plants on their front porch because it’s too shady in the backyard.

Incidentally, the City has never asked  me to remove my garden. They say they’ll never enforce it but they refuse to change the ordinance back. They also acknowledge they are aware certain other individuals in fact have chickens, but a young  professional couple with two adorable children lost theirs when a building inspector inadvertently witnessed them from the next house over and became fearful of possibly losing his job if he didn’t report them.

As a city council member for four years I’ve tried to persuade my colleagues to agree to change these ordinances, but they are hardened and galvanized against it.  They believe that growing one’s own food is something poor people do. And they believe they are working to abate urban blight. I know I could, of course, pursue a ballot initiative. It would require gathering signatures from 15% of our 7,775 registered voters, and our County Board of Elections recommends, per their data, collecting double that amount so that would be 2,332 signatures. But the process is prejudiced by our electorate by association with the Chicken Man, and the accompanying stigma of presumed urban blight which also is a very real concern in our community given our location. Frankly,  having one’s own chickens is not something that appeals to the majority.

People are scarcely aware how very regulated these municipal backyard chicken ordinances are in our neighboring communities  which allow them. It is significant to note also, in our infamous Chicken Man’s lawsuit, the judge did not rule against having chickens, but only that the city had the right to have ordinances  against nuisances and unsanitary conditions.  HB175 contains these very same safeguards.

Finally, I especially want to address the plight of our suburban school children who don’t even know where food comes from, plagued by embarrassing obesity, and humiliating and unsustainably-costly chronic diseases of epidemic proportions, who can’t even bring a peanut butter sandwich for lunch into the school building.

Bedford City Schools have ranked near the bottom of Cuyahoga County in test scores. This has had  an extremely adverse effect on our real estate values and local economy.  Our genetic code specifies some 60, or so, different minerals utilized for the proper functioning of our bodies and minds.  The USDA’s data has shown the most vital of these diminishing in our local food supplies, continually year after year.  Our children don’t have the minerals in their brains to function properly.  They cannot learn, or pay attention, or concentrate, or comprehend and hold great thoughts as once before.  People are blaming the schools but the schools are no different than ever before, the same loving parents, the same books, the same desks, the same teachers from the same universities, and the same curriculums yet test scores continue to plummet and one simple root cause is right before our eyes.

We need to lift the veil and see it for what it is. Our lower classes will never advance given the diets their circumstances cause them to eat.  That’s not even considering the pesticides also linked to the tragedy of our poor health. It’s too numerous to mention all the conditions linked to just the pesticides, but they include behavior problems, for which 8.3 million of our children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs.

What is the nature of a government that would prohibit its citizens from producing their own pure, unadulterated, nutrient-dense food, for sustenance, for food-as-medicine, except to keep the structure of power in the hands of the privileged?

So, all we are asking here is really the opportunity to restore our health and restore our economy from the grassroots, which is currently in opposition unwittingly to so many of our local governments, including in my own home town of Bedford, Ohio.”