Abstract
Amish dairy producers have a solid and growing presence on the farm landscape, and account for over 1/8 of all U.S. dairy farms (Cross 2007). In recent decades, many Amish who have a desire to farm as a way to maintain religious and family values have emigrated from eastern urbanizing rural areas to states, such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri, where non-Amish smaller-scale family farmers are leaving farming (Hostetler 1993; Cross 2004, 2007). Amish farmers are estimated to account for about 10 % of the more than 12,000 dairy farms in Wisconsin, ‘America’s Dairyland’ (Cross 2007), and they frequently use barns that would otherwise be abandoned or torn down (Cross 2004). In fact, Wisconsin now has the second largest concentration of Amish church settlements in the U.S. (Luthy 2003). There are similar dense pockets of Amish dairy farms in other states that historically have had large numbers of small dairy herds (e.g. Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Kentucky) (Cross 2007).
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Notes
- 1.
“Although the reasons are not entirely clear, by the 1970s, most Amish farmers were spreading chemical fertilizers and pesticides” (Kraybill et al. 2013, p. 286).
- 2.
Amish are an Anabaptist Christian religious group originating in Central and Western Europe. The Anabaptists split off from state church es during the Protestant Reformation period. One radical difference between them and other Christians was the issue of adult baptism, as Anabaptist or “to rebaptize” was originally a derogatory term that was adopted by these groups. Another generally common unifier between the Anabaptist groups is the commitment to peace through nonresistance (“turning the other cheek”). The Old Order Amish are generally considered to be the most culturally conservative of the Anabaptist groups (e.g. Mennonites, Hutterites, New Order Amish). We refer to Old Order Amish when discussing Amish throughout this paper. It is important for the Amish to remain separate from the world (Cor. 6:14) and not conform to it (Romans 12:2) (Hostetler 1993; Dilly 1994). The Amish have chosen to respond to the tension of being Christ’s example in a corrupt world with a removed lifestyle approach. This removed lifestyle explains some of their dress styles and use of technology that are so distinctive from mainstream Americans. It may also explain their distance from politics and from government assistance including farm subsidies (Dilly 1994). The Amish farmers in this report are Old Order Amish and have more restrictive ordinances (or Ordnung) than many of the other Amish groups. The Old Order Amish in the Kickapoo region (the focus of this study) may be different on a number of characteristics than Old Order Amish groups. Some farming practices that are distinctive of the Amish in this region include farming with horses and milking by hand.
- 3.
Settlements are divided up into church districts of about 25 families, and church districts are governed by a bishop and a varying number of ministers and deacons. The church district bishops govern the Ordnung of the settlement as a whole. Each settlement tends to have commonalities in the individual church’s Ordnung.
- 4.
This use of economic argumentation resembles that of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Smith 1776) where economics was not a separate discipline as it is considered today but a branch of philosophy which was integrated into all human activity and assessments of overall well-being (Daly and Cobb 1989; Goudzwaard 2000). t is also important to point out that the term oikonomia has a holistic connotation that extends beyond the farm to consider long term values for the other households and the surrounding community (Daly and Cobb 1989), which can make farmers happier in their own lives (Berry 1997). It is the integrated essence of the “family farm” experience where work, consumption, leisure, and relationship to others, the environment, and spirituality all occur largely in the same place that seem to make for a large degree of “inseparability.”
- 5.
“Ecumenism” is the management of a household’s values, morals, and spiritual resources. Economy or Oikonomia in the Christian Biblical sense is the way the Creator manages His household and the way humans are called to steward the creation is mentioned several times in the New Testament (Worster 1994; Gottfried 1995; Goudzwaard 1997, 2000).
- 6.
- 7.
Satisficing may in part explain why decision-makers stop their thinking or information gathering early on, based on an attitude that continued searching “seems like a waste of time” (Mansourian and Nigel 2007, p. 686).
- 8.
- 9.
The interview sample was mainly drawn from 100 respondents to a 2004 mail-based survey which was a full sample survey of Amish farmers from several settlements who sell milk to, Old Country Cheese, an Amish cheese cooperative based in Cashton, WI.
- 10.
Roughly one-half of the Amish sample was selected from the Cashton settlement, and one-half was selected from the Hillsboro settlement.
- 11.
However, there were a few interviews with Amish elders and other informants that were co-conducted with Dr. Dail Murray, a professor from UW-Marinette who was studying other socio-anthropological topics related to Amish in the Kickapoo.
- 12.
Isaiah 55: 10.
- 13.
Matthew (6:25 and 6:32).
- 14.
“In 1997, Ohio had no certified organic dairies but in a few years there were over one hundred, and ninety percent of them were Amish and Old Order Mennonite” (Kraybill et al. 2013). Across the United States, the organic option seems to be playing an important role in Amish agriculture in some parts of the country as noted earlier. Greenfield Farms (http://www.gffarms.com/) in Ohio is one example (Kraybill 2001; Mariola and McConnell 2013). Another example, closer to the Wisconsin settlements in this paper, is Kalona Organics in Iowa (http://www.kalonaorganics.com/who_we_are.html).
- 15.
Some other settlements in eastern states adopted bulk tanks as early as the 1969 (Kraybill and Olshan 1994).
- 16.
A cross-check of this story suggested that it may have been just gossip.
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Brock, C., Barham, B. (2015). Amish Dedication to Farming and Adoption of Organic Dairy Systems. In: Freyer, B., Bingen, J. (eds) Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9190-8_12
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