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Japanese No, most Amish farms are not organic. Amish farmers who still work the land usually buy commercial fertilizers and pesticides, though they farm on a smaller scale than their neighbors and do much of the fieldwork with horses. A minority grow organic produce, some under certification. Most Amish families now earn their living off the farm.
Do Amish farmers use pesticides and fertilizers?
Most do. Matthew Mariola and David McConnell, researchers at the College of Wooster, wrote in 2013 that, contrary to popular perception, the large majority of Amish are not full-time farmers, and those who do farm typically use conventional, chemical-intensive methods. The Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College puts it more briefly: many Amish farmers do not practice organic farming.
A field study from northern New York shows what that looks like on the ground. In the autumn of 1994, researchers from St. Lawrence University interviewed 30 farmers in the Swartzentruber Amish settlement of Heuvelton and De Peyster, among the more conservative Amish settlements, and 29 non-Amish farmers nearby. The Amish farms were smaller, more diverse and less tied to the market. But both groups used inorganic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, and in about the same overall amounts. The Amish chose somewhat different products, which led the authors to say that their use differed “in kind, not amount.” They suggested that the settlement’s newness, a lack of awareness of the ecological effects, or a shift away from tradition might explain it.
Which Amish farms are organic?
Some settlements have seen a growing number of small specialty farms that raise vegetables, herbs and flowers, and some of these use organic methods to sell into city markets, according to the Young Center. Mariola and McConnell studied one such group, an Amish organic farming cooperative in northeast Ohio. They found that its members chose certified organic for practical reasons rooted in a worry about losing their farming heritage. Certification brought its own strains for a people wary of bureaucracy and outside regulation, and the cooperative had to find buyers while reluctant to use the Amish name in its advertising.
How are Amish farms run?
Until the 1960s most Amish families lived on small, mixed farms with a dozen cows, some chickens and a few beef cattle. Many Amish farms have since specialized in dairy and, in some cases, chickens or hogs. Most Amish groups forbid self-propelled farm machinery, as they forbid electricity from public utility lines, and some farmers keep a tractor at the barn without taking it into the field. In the New York study, the Amish worked their fields with horse-drawn equipment and ran stationary petroleum-powered engines around the outbuildings to cool milk and lift hay. Farmers in most settlements use mechanical milkers and bulk cooling tanks, while the more traditional ones milk by hand and ship their milk in cans to cheese plants.
The New York farmers raised food mainly for their own families, keeping only as many cows as the household needed and selling surplus milk, vegetables and a few animals. Neighbors share the heavy work. Hundreds of people can raise a barn in a single day, and an injured farmer will usually find his crops harvested by other Amish.
Why does farming matter to the Amish?
The Amish have long held that farming suits a Christian life. Karen Johnson-Weiner, a scholar of the Amish, summarized their belief that God created the world and then “created human beings whom he commanded to harness and cultivate the earth.” The idea echoes Genesis 2:15, where God places Adam in Eden: “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” She also described an image drawn from the seed-and-soil parables Jesus tells in Matthew 13: some soil favors good seed and some favors weeds, and in the same way some occupations favor a Christian life. The authors of the New York study concluded that for the Amish, farming is more than an occupation: it is a way of protecting their religion and values.
Do most Amish still farm?
No. Farming still holds a revered place in Amish life, but in many settlements most Amish have left it. In some communities fewer than 10 percent of households earn their main income from farming, a shift the Young Center calls the biggest change in Amish society in the last century. Many Amish now work in small family shops, often making furniture and other wood products, or on construction crews. In northern Indiana many work in factories that build recreational vehicles. Many families still keep a hobby farm alongside their other work.
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