I don’t know how it is where you live, but around here, every local town has a community group on Facebook. While these groups can be a good source of information, they are also hotbeds for gossip and complaints. I find such conversations entertaining. (I also wonder if public schools have stopped teaching English.)
Yesterday, a woman took to the Bryan community page to whine, gripe, and complain about three teen boys on bicycles who gave her the middle finger as she drove by. She hoped that a big man would teach them a lesson by beating them up. Yikes! Talk about overkill.
Other offended commenters added their complaints about being flipped off to the discussion, concluding that modern youths are more disrespectful than they were back in the day; that they never would have given a stranger the middle finger. I tend to roll my eyes when boomers delusively talk about how good life was in the “good old days.” The 60s and 70s were different, to be sure, but better than today? I have my doubts. Teenagers have always been disrespectful. It is part of their rite of passage. Three boys, under the age of sixteen, flipping off someone as they drive by? Not an issue. Older man beating them up for doing so? That’s a felony.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I have lived in rural Ohio most of my sixty-eight years of life, living in communities such as Bryan, Farmer, Ney, Deshler, Mt. Blanchard, Mt. Perry, New Lexington, Junction City, Alvordton, Glenford, and Newark. I spent most of my life in northwest and southeast Ohio. I spent almost three decades pastoring poor people; people on government assistance, Medicaid, and food stamps. Most of these people had at least one adult family member who held a full-time job. I spent eleven years pastoring a Baptist church in Perry County, a notoriously poor county. One year, unemployment was over twenty percent. In its heyday, the church ran over 200 in attendance. Total offerings for that year? $40,000. Most years, offerings were closer to $20,000. While I grew up poor, this church gave me an intimate look at how the poor lived their day-to-day lives trying to make it to tomorrow.
WKBN reported recently that the Republican Governor Mike DeWine is trying to ban poor people on food stamps (actually SNAP) from drinking an ice-cold Coke (or Pepsi) on a hot summer day:
Ohio has formed a group to see which beverages should be banned from purchase using SNAP benefits.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Tuesday who the members of the group looking into the issue will be:
Matt Damschroder, Director, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) (or designee)
Maureen Corcoran, Director, Ohio Department of Medicaid (or designee)
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, Director, Ohio Department of Health (or designee)
Rachel Cahill, Visiting Fellow, The Center for Community Solutions
Douglas Lumpkin, former director of ODJFS
Kimberly McConville, Executive Director, Ohio Beverage Association
Lora Miller, Director of Governmental Affairs & Public Relations, Ohio Council of Retail Merchants
Kristin Mullins, President/CEO, Ohio Grocers Association
Dr. Jonathan Thackeray, Dayton Children’s Hospital
Lexi Tindall, Clinical Manager for the Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition, Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Pat Tiberi, President & CEO, Ohio Business Roundtable
The group will make recommendations that would prevent Ohio SNAP benefits from being used to purchase certain beverages that how minimal nutritional value and contribute to medical conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
Any ban would require approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Did you notice who Governor DeWine didn’t put on the group? Poor people. Shouldn’t the people this policy will affect have a say on the matter? Or is this more about self-righteous, arrogant Republicans thinking they have a right to tell the poor what they should eat and drink? They are just looking out for poor people, right?
Of all the things Governor DeWine and Republican legislators could focus on, they choose to focus on “pop.” (Or “soda” for you who live in other places.) This obsession with controlling the behavior of the poor has been a common problem for years. Republicans see a poor person using food stamps and they notice what’s in their cart. OMG! They bought pop and candy. God forbid they reward themselves with sweets after a long week at work. God forbid poor children enjoy the same food and drink as people of means.
I wonder if we paid close attention to the grocery shopping carts of the middle class and the rich. Does anyone doubt that we will find pop, candy, and “junk food” in their carts? If this is really all about “health,” why not ban all sugary foods and drinks? Surely that’s best for rich folk, right? Imagine the outrage from the financially secure if they can’t drink a Coke or eat a Snickers?
On behalf of poor Ohioans, let me say this to Governor DeWine and Ohio Republicans: Go fuck yourself!
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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President Donald Trump is a psychopath who has no empathy for anyone but himself. Trump does no wrong. He even said he hasn’t done anything worthy of asking forgiveness from God. In his eyes, he sees himself as one of the greatest American presidents, ever, worthy of his spray-tanned face being chiseled into Mount Rushmore. Trump’s visions of grandeur know no bounds. He delusionally thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. A liar and a braggart, he spins lies into stories about everything from his prowess with women to being the greatest negotiator who ever lived.
Whatever Trump might think about himself, in the real world we continue to judge politicians by their works. The Bible tells us to judge people by the fruit they produce. What, if anything, has Trump done for everyday Americans? Not much. So far, all he has done is foment chaos and fear. Financial markets are having a hard time figuring out what the “stable genius” is doing. Trump’s handlers tell us to trust him, saying he is a master businessman and financier, all the while ignoring that he has gone bankrupt numerous times. A reckoning is coming for Trump. Not today, but once he is out of office and lacks the power of the state, business leaders will be free to ignore his insanity. Of course, until that glorious day, we have to live with Trump’s ignorance about how the world really works, hoping he doesn’t drag us into another war or burn our world to the ground. This should come as no surprise since Trump doesn’t read. He even avoids reading security briefings, preferring pictures or summaries. He is the most illiterate man to ever be president. Regrettably, millions of Americans are fine with Trump’s apathy towards learning new things, especially things that challenge his racist, fascist, misogynistic beliefs.
Trump now faces questions about his relationship with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Extant evidence suggests that the men were best buds who had a sickening obsession with underage girls. Trump, of course, denies everything. Instead, he blames Barack “Hussein” Obama, “Sleepy” Joe Biden, and arch nemesis, Hilary Clinton. Take his whopper of a lie about his uncle, John Trump, teaching Ted Kaczynski at MIT. From stem to stern, this was a lie. Are we so numb to his lies that we ignore them? I hope not. The future of our republic is at stake.
Bruce Gerencser Ney, Ohio
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As states rush to address falling literacy scores, a new kind of education debate in state legislatures is taking hold: not whether reading instruction needs fixing, but how to fix it.
More than a dozen states have enacted laws banning public school educators from teaching youngsters to read using an approach that’s been popular for decades. The method, known as “three-cueing,” encourages kids to figure out unfamiliar words using context clues such as meaning, sentence structure, and visual hints.
In the past two years, several states have instead embraced instruction rooted in what’s known as the “science of reading.” That approach leans heavily on phonics — relying on letter and rhyming sounds to read words such as cat, hat, and rat.
The policy discussions on early literacy are unfolding against a backdrop of alarming national reading proficiency levels. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card revealed that 40% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below the basic reading level — the highest percentages in decades.
No state improved in fourth- or eighth-grade reading in 2024. Eight states — Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, and Vermont — scored worse than they did a year or two prior in eighth-grade reading.
Five states — Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont — saw dips in their fourth-grade reading scores.
In response to these troubling trends, a growing number of states are moving beyond localized efforts and tackling literacy through statewide legislation.
New Jersey last year mandated universal K-3 literacy screenings. Indiana lawmakers this month passed a bill that would allow some students to retake required reading tests before being held back in third grade; that bill is en route to the governor’s desk.
Oregon and Washington are weighing statewide literacy coaching and training models, while lawmakers in Montana introduced a bill to allow literacy interventions to cover broader reading and academic skills, not just early reading basics.
Mississippi, a state seen as a model for turnaround in literacy rates over the past decade, seeks to expand and require evidence-based reading interventions, mandatory literacy screenings and targeted teacher training, and to explicitly ban the use of three-cueing methods in reading instruction in grades 4-8.
Together, these efforts signal a national shift: States are treating literacy not as a local initiative, but as the foundation of public education policy.
“Literacy is the lever,” said Tafshier Cosby, the senior director of the Center for Organizing and Partnerships at the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. “If states focus on that, we see bipartisan wins. But the challenge is making that a statewide priority, not just a district-by-district hope.”
Before he was even sworn in, first-term Georgia Democratic state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, a former teacher and principal, had already drafted a bill to end the use of the three-cueing system in Georgia classrooms.
This month, the final version passed the state legislature without a single “no” vote. GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law Monday.
Sen. Kemp said his passion for literacy reform stretches back decades, shaped by experiences tutoring children at a local church as a college student in the early 2000s. It was there, he said, that he began noticing patterns in how students struggled with foundational reading.
“In my experience, I saw kids struggle to identify the word they were reading. I saw how some kids were guessing what the word was instead of decoding,” Kemp recalled. “And it’s not technology or screens that’s the problem. It’s what teachers are being instructed on how to teach reading. It’s the system that needs fixing, not the teachers.”
The new law requires the Professional Standards Commission — a state agency that oversees teacher prep and certification — to adopt rules mandating evidence-based reading instruction aligned with the science of reading, a set of practices rooted in decades of cognitive research on how children best learn to read.
“Current strategies used to teach literacy include methods that teach students to guess rather than read, preventing them from reaching their full potential,” Sen. Kemp said in a public statement following the bill’s legislative passage. “I know we can be better, and I’m proud to see our legislative body take much-needed steps to help make Georgia the number one state for literacy.”
In West Virginia, lawmakers have introduced similar bills that would require the state’s teachers to be certified in the science of reading.
Cosby, of the National Parents Union, said local policy changes can be driven by parents even before legislatures act.
“All politics are local,” Cosby said. “Parents don’t need to wait for statewide mandates — they can ask school boards for universal screeners and structured literacy now.”
Still, some parents worry their states are simply funding more studies on early literacy rather than taking direct action to address it.
A Portland, Oregon, parent of three — one of whom has dyslexia — sent written testimony this year urging lawmakers to skip further studies and immediately implement structured literacy statewide.
“We do not need another study to tell us what we already know — structured literacy is the most effective way to teach all children to read, particularly those with dyslexia and other reading challenges,” wrote Katherine Hoffman.
Unlike in Georgia, the “science of reading” has met resistance in other states.
In California, legislation that would require phonics-based reading instruction statewide has faced opposition from English learner advocates who argue that a one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively serve multilingual students.
In opposition to the bill, the California Teachers Association argued that by codifying a rigid definition of the “science of reading,” lawmakers ignore the evolving nature of reading research and undermine teachers’ ability to meet the diverse needs of their students.
“Placing a definition for ‘science of reading’ in statute is problematic,” wrote Seth Bramble, a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association in a March letter addressed to the state’s Assembly Education Committee. “This bill would carve into stone scientific knowledge that by its very nature is constantly being tested, validated, refuted, revised, and improved.”
Similarly, in Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in March vetoed a bill that would have reversed changes to the state’s scoring system to align the state’s benchmarks with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal assessment tool that has recently been hit with funding cuts and layoffs under the Trump administration. Evers said in his veto that Republican lawmakers were stepping on the state superintendent’s independence.
That veto is another step in the evolution of a broader constitutional fight over literacy policy and how literacy funds are appropriated and released. In 2023, Wisconsin lawmakers set aside $50 million for a new statewide literacy initiative, but disagreements over legislative versus executive control have stalled its disbursement.
Indiana’s legislature faced criticism from educators over a 2024 mandate requiring 80 hours of literacy training for pre-K to sixth-grade teachers before they can renew their licenses. Teachers argued that the additional requirements were burdensome and did not account for their professional expertise.
In Illinois, literacy struggles have been building for more than a decade, according to Mailee Smith, senior director of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. Today, only 3 in 10 Illinois third- and fourth-graders can read at grade level, based on state and national assessments.
Although Illinois lawmakers amended the school code in 2023 to create a state literacy plan, Smith noted the plan is only guidance and does not require districts to adopt evidence-based reading instruction. She urged local school boards to act on their own.
“If students can’t read by third grade, half of the fourth-grade curriculum becomes incomprehensible,” she said. “A student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted by their reading skill at the end of third grade.”
Despite the challenges, Smith said even small steps can make a real difference.
“Screening, intervention, parental notice, science-based instruction, and thoughtful grade promotion — those are the five pillars, and Illinois and even local school districts can implement some of these steps right away,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be daunting.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
Anybody think if there’s a Lake Michigan, maybe there should be a Lake Ohio around here? I’m feeling that. We’ll talk about that a little bit more as this campaign progresses.
— Vivek Ramaswamy, 2026 Republican Candidate for Ohio Governor, as reported by Cleveland.com
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Jesus summed up God’s laws by commanding Christians to love God and love their neighbor. Jesus had much to say about how to treat others, especially the poor — whom the Bible calls “the least of these.” Allegedly, Republicans are God’s Only Party, and President Donald Trump is Christian in Chief. Evangelical Christians hold numerous cabinet-level positions, and others hold lesser positions in the Trump Administration. Yet, a cursory review of President Trump’s first month in office reveals a Republican administration disconnected from the teachings of Christ in the gospels.
Sadly, many Evangelicals think they will one day be judged based on having the right beliefs; that what’s important to God is certain doctrines and social beliefs. However, the gospels reveal that God will judge everyone based on how they live, not what they believe. Matthew 25 makes clear that God will judge people, not on their beliefs, but on how they treated poor, marginalized people.
While I am no longer a Christian, I was a follower of Jesus for fifty years. I pastored Evangelical churches in three states for twenty-five years. If there’s one thing I learned, it is that how we treat other people matters to God; and, more importantly, how we love, care, and minister to the least of these reveals what matters to us.
With these things in mind, what do we make of the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, non-Christians, people of color, transgender people, pregnant women, government employees, and poor people? Just today, Jesus-loving Republicans voted to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, with cuts to Social Security and Medicaid to follow. Millions of Americans will lose medical insurance, child care, and food stamps. It is impossible to square these draconian, immoral cuts with the teachings of Jesus. Local Evangelicals send weekly letters to the editor preaching right doctrine and political affiliation. I have yet to read one letter in the Crescent News from Evangelicals preaching the importance of helping the least of these. I am grateful that a handful of local churches take seriously the teachings of Christ, providing food, utilities, rent, car repairs, and clothing to the poor. However, most churches are more concerned about political and theological fidelity than they are about a beaten, half-dead man along a dirt road. What we need are more Good Samaritans — Christian or not, Republican or Democrat — who love their neighbors as themselves.
Bruce Gerencser Ney, Ohio
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Does Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman hate public schools?
He very well might not hate public schools. I doubt that he would ever use those words. But as an observer, it just really comes off like Matt Huffman hates public schools.
Or maybe he has some sort of grudge against them and thinks they should struggle and suffer more than they already are.
Maybe hate is too strong a word. Maybe he’s just callously indifferent to public schools. Or maybe it’s not hatred or indifference; it’s a kind of gristle-chewing contempt for public schools combined with a deep, warm, abiding love and affection for private, for-profit, and religious schools.
I really don’t know.
What I do know is that since Ohio’s system for funding public education was declared unconstitutional more than 25 years ago, Ohioans have only seen two brief periods of time when anything resembling a constitutional school funding formula has been in place: the evidence-based model passed and signed under Gov. Ted Strickland in 2009 and then quickly overturned by Gov. John Kasich in 2011, and the bipartisan Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan that was put in place in 2021.
Now the future of Cupp-Patterson is in jeopardy as Huffman has declared it “unsustainable.”
Huffman, who starts the year as Ohio House Speaker after being term-limited out as Ohio Senate President, enjoys enormous influence in the Ohio Statehouse amid Republican supermajorities in both chambers.
The Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan included a phasing-in schedule over six years, or three budget cycles in Ohio. Now that the first two phases have been implemented, Huffman is signaling he’s ready to call the thing off.
“I don’t think there is a third phase to Cupp-Patterson,” Huffman told reporters Monday. “I guess the clear statement I can say is I think those increases in spending are unsustainable.”
Unsustainable. Fair School Funding in Ohio is “unsustainable.”
In Ohio, 90% of students attend public schools, while only 10% attend private schools. But according to Huffman, shoveling nearly $1 billion per year to private schools to help families who were already using private schools is definitely, absolutely, no doubt sustainable, while funding Ohio’s Fair School Funding plan for 90% of students is not.
Even under Cupp-Patterson, school districts across Ohio are facing enormous difficulties.
Here are some headlines about Ohio school districts around the state from 2024:
I’m going to stop here because I could go on and on with these.
I read an abnormal amount of local news from all around Ohio, so I know this all is happening because I see these headlines all the time. I don’t expect most Ohioans to be aware that school districts everywhere across the state are facing such terrible trouble, but I do expect the Ohio House Speaker to know it, because, well, that’s his job.
What I can’t understand is this: If you know that public school districts across Ohio are facing awful budget hardship, teacher shortages, morale problems, busing problems and driver shortages, an extremely hostile public, a complete unwillingness in many communities to pass local levies, would you, as Ohio House Speaker, try to find ways to help schools give 90% of students the absolute best education possible? Or would you rip away more resources and make their problems worse?
I would try to help.
I hope most people would try to help.
But Matt Huffman is signaling he intends to cause them more pain. And that’s why I wonder, does he hate public schools? Or, does he not care about them? Or does he just love private, for-profit, and religious schools so much that it doesn’t matter to him what happens to the 90% of students in public schools?
I don’t know. But if state lawmakers cut even more from public schools, all these headlines will keep getting worse, and Ohio communities, schools, teachers, students and families will all suffer the consequences.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
For 2,000 years, Christian preachers have been saying Jesus is coming to Earth soon. As the 1976 gospel song by Andre Crouch goes:
Soon and very soon We are going to see the King Soon and very soon We are going to see the King Soon and very soon We are going to see the King Hallelujah, Hallelujah We’re going to see the king
Soon and very soon? Every generation of believers believed that Jesus would return to Earth while they were still alive. And every generation of believers died without seeing Jesus face-to-face. In the 1970s and 1980s, in particular, Evangelicals were certain that Jesus was going to rapture them away, safe from the wrath and judgment God planned to pour on the Earth, as recorded in the book of Revelation. Alas, most preachers who prophesied that the rapture was nigh died, proving themselves to be false prophets. Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Harold Camping, Herbert W. Armstrong, Edgar Whisenant, Jerry Falwell, and Ed Dobson — all pushing up daisies in the cemetery — predicted Jesus’s return in their lifetime.
These days, Evangelicals have largely given up on making predictions about the second coming of Jesus. Tired of waiting for Jesus to show up again, Evangelicals have taken to building a kingdom on earth through raw political power. They do not need Jesus; Trump is their Lord.
Earlier today, Defiance County, Ohio residents experienced an earth-shaking event that I hope will change their minds about the rapture. I spent fifty years of my life hearing Evangelical preachers preach passionate sermons about the imminent return of Jesus. Countless sermons were preached from Matthew 24:
And as he [Jesus] sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
….
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
….
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
Astute readers of the Bible will notice that I have skipped a number of Bible verses. I did this because that is exactly what many, if not most Evangelical preachers do. Their goal is to make a point or advance an agenda instead of properly exegeting the Word of God. If that was their plan, they would preach this passage of Scripture in context, and in doing so, teach their congregations that Matthew 24 has nothing to do with the rapture.
At 6:48 AM, Defiance County, Ohio, specifically the community of Hicksville (a few miles from our home), felt a magnitude 2.9 earthquake. This is the first recorded earthquake in Defiance County history. No fault lines lie nearby, so experts wonder what caused the earthquake. I suspect some local Evangelical preachers won’t wonder about what happened. Nope, these prophets of the Almighty will turn to Matthew 24, rip out the verses necessary to prove their point, and say that this earthquake is an irrefutable sign of the second coming of Jesus. Yes, siree bob, Jesus is coming soon! What other explanation could there be, right?
In time, scientists will posit likely explanations for the Defiance Earthquake®. And sure as Jesus is still lying in an unmarked Judean grave, these very same preachers will conveniently forget their earthquake predictions and move on to other newspaper auguries, sure, that this time, they will be right.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
When people think of the Amish, they think of plain-clothed people, horses and buggies, and idyllic farms. While this picture is largely true, here in rural Northwest Ohio, Amish farmers in partnership with JBS Foods, the world’s largest beef producer, are operating large factory farms. The result? Polluted waterways and land. What follows is a feature story on this issue published by Circle of Blue.
Adhering to a strict religious doctrine that resists new technology, Amish farmers here spent decades largely eschewing industrial farming practices that have become common around the United States.
But that bucolic tableau of plain people earnestly cultivating the rich soil where three states meet has ceased to exist, splintered by an industrial farm alliance between one of the area’s leading Amish farming families and JBS Foods, the world’s largest beef producer. Over the last two years, JBS has forged a partnership to establish a mammoth vertically integrated concentrated cattle feeding operation that is confining more than 100,000 male calves and steers in large concrete, steel, and vinyl-covered feeding barns, and generating thousands of tons of solid manure each day.
Prompted by persistent complaints of odor and contamination, regulators from the Ohio Agriculture Department and the state Environmental Protection Agency investigated earlier this year and cited nine farms for manure mismanagement, and issued fines to three farms for failing to secure proper operating permits.
The cited farms, most owned by the Schmucker family, are close to each other in Williams County, Ohio. Inspectors from the two state agencies found uncontained manure running off big waste piles and out of barns, and draining into streams and wetlands. Inspectors took water samples that contained high concentrations of nitrogen ammonia, a contaminant of manure.
The state findings were consistent with those observed by area residents who’ve watched as Amish farmers piled manure in huge mounds, spread it on farm fields as fertilizer, and taken their own water samples that confirmed it polluted streams, lakes, and the St. Joseph River.
The widespread contamination caused a deepening schism with the community, which was unprepared for such immense agricultural industrialization and the subsequent environmental contamination.
Neither Noah Schmucker Jr., the leader of the Amish farm community, nor JBS executives agreed to be interviewed for this report. Executives of Wagler and Associates, an Indiana construction company heavily involved in building the feeding barns, declined to be interviewed.
When asked about the concerns, Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Brian Baldridge said the agency would continue to “engage with all property owners to ensure they are following Ohio laws and rules.”
What’s unfolded around this farming town of 800 residents in the far northwestern corner of Ohio is the agricultural equivalent of what occurred during the fracking boom in Williston, North Dakota in the late 2000s. Powered by new technology, vastly different production practices, and access to huge sums of capital, a new beef production industry swept into a region unaccustomed and unprepared for such immense agricultural industrialization, or its environmental contamination.
….
Just as in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Missouri and other states that support large industrialized livestock and poultry sectors, concentrated feeding operations are major polluters. Water samples collected by the Steuben County Lakes Council and the Williams County Alliance, two environmental groups, show persistently high concentrations of nitrates, phosphorus, and dangerous E-coli bacteria in streams and lakes in the region that encompass the St. Joseph River watershed. The river serves Fort Wayne with its drinking water, and drains into the Maumee River, the primary source of the pollutants that cause a mammoth annual toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie. The groups also tracked the contamination upstream headwaters of Fish Creek and Black Creek. Both flow through the Amish cattle farms.
The situation outrages Sandy Bihn, executive director of Lake Erie Waterkeeper, who has worked for decades on regional, national, and binational groups to cure the lake’s annual toxic bloom.
“How is it possible to let 100,000 animals, and all the nitrates and phosphorus that they produce, come into the watershed that we’re investing millions and millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars to protect?” Bihn said. “This just shows how meat and JBS are able to control the system.”
While the buggies, beards, and plain dress still help to identify Amish farms in Williams County and the two neighboring counties, there is nothing characteristically Amish about the vertically integrated, industrial scale, scientifically advanced calf and cattle production system that has quickly evolved here.
The financial advantage is plain for the Schmuckers and the other Amish farmers. The most labor intensive aspect of the Amish cattle operation is feeding and caring for calves. Amish families are large. There are plenty of hands available for the work. Latino laborers also are employed to help with animal care and operate the skidders that push manure out of the barns. Judging by the number of new homes, new cattle confinement facilities, and the prices Amish are paying for farmland – $14,000 to $20,000 an acre, according to county records –business is lucrative.
….The civic confrontation between the Amish and English communities started in December 2023 when Noah Schmucker and Wagler and Associates sought a permit to build a $10 million feeding facility for 8,000 calves and cattle in Steuben County. It was the first time the scale of the operation and JBS’s involvement was publicly revealed. Schmucker baldly stated at the hearing that if the county refused the permit he would just build smaller feeding barns that evaded county and state permitting requirements. Ohio does not require a permit unless a barn houses over 1,000 animals. Indiana’s limit is 300.
Hundreds of residents, many of them owners of lakeside homes, protested both options, fearing water pollution from manure. The county rejected the permit, prompting Schmucker to proceed with subdividing land and construction.
Evidence of the industry’s presence, and its profitability, is everywhere now around Edon. Dozens of big concrete, steel, and vinyl cattle feeding barns have already been built, each costing $130,000 or more, and many others are under construction. Trucks hauling calves and cattle crowd the highways and the narrow dirt farm-to-market roads. New Amish homes are under construction. Manure piles rest like sleeping beasts beside confinement barns. Trucks loaded with manure head for dumping sites. The entire region’s scent is an invisible and noxious veil of cattle wastes.
Following persistent complaints of from residents of pollution and odor state environmental and agriculture authorities in the three states inspected many of the Amish farms. Michigan authorities directed a calf feeding operation to halt the flow of manure draining into a stream that fed a nearby lake. Inspectors from Indiana’s Agriculture Department inspected a Steuben County farm and found that it was in compliance with state rules.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency cited nine Amish farms for violations of manure management regulations in August and set a September 1 deadline for fixing them that the farms met. Ohio authorities discovered several feeding sites where the number of cattle exceeded 1,000 animals, and the farms have since some into compliance. The state also ordered the largest mounds of manure, some towering two and three stories tall, to be removed.
The Ohio Agriculture Department issued $20,000 in fines to three Amish farms for failing to acquire the proper state permits.
Ohio’s action reflects the limited reach of state environmental law to control agricultural contamination. Though modest, the state’s enforcement is the most aggressive against farm pollution since 1999, when Ohio cited an egg farm for fouling water with chicken litter.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I attended forty or so High School basketball games a year – both boys’ and girls’ games. In the process of doing so, I shot thousands of photographs. I have attended games at every school in the Buckeye Border Conference, the Green Meadows Conference, and games at schools affiliated with the Northwest Ohio Athletic League, Western Buckeye League, and the Three Rivers Athletic Conference. (I also attend numerous tournament games.) I could spend the next hour or two critiquing the various facilities, including how suited they are for photography. I have watched dozens of officials work these games. Some of them are consummate pros skilled at their craft. Others, not so much. Some officials have rabbit ears, reacting negatively to coach or fan criticism. Other officials are stone-cold killers, indifferent to critics in the stands. I guess what I am saying is this: I know a fair bit about Northwest Ohio basketball.
Coaches
High school basketball coaches come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. Some of them are teachers of the game, patient with their players, and rarely raise their voices. Others are Bobby Knight-like screaming psychopaths. These screamers constantly berate their players and officials. On more than a few occasions, I’ve watched verbally assaulted players stop listening to their coaches. I am surprised that school boards think it is still okay to employ coaches who treat players this way. I can’t think of a thing such behavior accomplishes that couldn’t be accomplished with a lower voice raised from time to time as needed. The best coaches in the area are men and women who know how to motivate their players to play better and harder, all without psychologically brutalizing them. These screamers are throwbacks to the days when I played basketball. I have been screamed and hollered at more times than I can count, often deservedly so. That said, I had far greater respect for coaches who were passionately firm, men who kept their emotions in control, even when the play on the court was dismal.
Officials
I was taught that you never allow a game to get to the place where the officials determine the outcome. Officials are going to miss calls. They are human, and will, at times, have a bad night. Smart players discern how the officiating crew is calling the game. Sometimes, officials let players play, rarely calling fouls. Others call everything, even nit-picky fouls. My coaches frequently reminded me that “if it looks like a foul, it is a foul.” Players have to play smart. In doing so, they keep the officials from being the deciding factor.
Some coaches allow their players to question or talk back to officials. In my playing days, such behavior would have gotten you a technical foul and a quick trip to the bench. Several years ago, I attended a boys’ game where one of the players screamed at one of the officials, when are you going to call a fucking foul? The young man rightly received a technical foul and his coach took him out of the game for a couple of minutes. He should have been tossed out of the game and suspended for the next game. Should the official have called a foul? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Respect for officials and opponents is a crucial part of the learning experience; a fact often forgotten is that high school sports are meant to teach teenagers life lessons. When coaches, fans, and parents are screaming at the officials, is it surprising that players think it is okay to do the same?
Fans and Parents
in 2020, I attended girls’ basketball games (both the JV and Varsity games) where a man and his wife spent the entire night berating and badgering the officials. These fans were able to see from 90 feet away that the official standing two feet away was making the wrong call. Traveling was their favorite complaint — all directed at the opposing team, of course. (The opposing team won both games, with the varsity team winning by 40.) During the JV game, the clock hadn’t ticked off 30 seconds before the home team coach was screaming at the officials for “missing” a foul. She was so abusive that one official went to her and said, I’ve heard enough. Sit.
One thing I have noticed over the years is that screaming coaches beget screaming fans. Fans smell blood in the water and go after the officials. Did the officials miss some calls during the aforementioned game? Sure, but they were hardly the reason the home team received a forty-point beat-down. Lazy defense and poor shooting, and not the officials, cost the hometown girls the game. As the game got into the fourth quarter, local fans started grousing about the visiting team’s players. They seemed to think that the opposing team should have stopped playing hard. One girl shot a successful three-pointer and one fan said the girl lacked class. Don’t want the girl to make the shot? Try playing defense. Play harder, play better, realizing that on some nights you are just going to get your ass whipped. (This is the same school where fans several years ago ridiculed an opposing player for being fat. Talk about class.)
Fans think their $6-$8 ticket gives them the right to be an asshole, and to some degree they are right. I wish they would, however, consider what they are teaching children and players alike with their behavior. Some fans act as if the most important thing in the universe is their team winning the game — an event that will long be forgotten weeks or years later. One Saturday, Polly and I attended a boys’ basketball game where a man in his sixties sitting two people away from us spent the entire night — with a blood pressure-raised red face — hollering at the officials. He was quite entertaining. He was also a buffoon.
The worst fans are the parents who spend their time constantly coaching their children from the stands or verbally disciplining them for not playing harder, making the shot, defending the opposing player, or countless other offenses. These parents, intentionally or not, embarrass their children. I’ve seen more than a few players cringe when Mom, Dad, or Grandpa hollers at them from the stands. These players have coaches, so there is no need for parents to be coaching them from the stands. Let the coaches do their jobs.
What is it we want high school players to learn from the game? Sports are meant to teach life lessons; lessons such as life is hard and sometimes the best team doesn’t win the game. Sports teach players that life isn’t fair, and that sometimes no matter how hard you work, you are going to fail. These life lessons and others prepare teenagers for the real world, a place that will eat them alive if they aren’t prepared. Facing adversity is essential to future success as an adult. I mentioned in a post titled Dear Bruce Turner one such experience I faced as a tenth-grade basketball player:
You were my basketball coach. Trinity sponsored a team in the ultra-competitive high school age Church Basketball League. One game I had a terrible night shooting the ball. I was frustrated and I told you I wanted out of the game. You refused and made me play the whole game. My shooting didn’t get any better, but I learned a life lesson that I passed on to all my children years later.
I learned on that night to never quit. Play hard, even when it seems everything you do is failing. Teenagers need to learn these kinds of lessons if we expect them to grow up into mature, responsible adults. What they don’t need to learn is that it is okay to yell, holler, scream, berate, and ridicule people who do something you disagree with. Coaches and fans alike do a great disservice to players when they go after officials and the opposing team’s coaches and players. The game’s importance will quickly fade away, but the lessons taught to players and children in the stands last a lifetime.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
