Living at Nature's Pace by Gene Logsdon

Author:Gene Logsdon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781603580496
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2011-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

9

Amish Economics

1989

The Amish have become a great embarrassment to American agribusiness. Many "English" farmers, as the Amish call the rest of us, are in poor financial straits and relatively few are making money. As a result, it is fashionable among writers, the clergy, politicians, farm machinery dealers, and bankers to depict the family farmer as a dying breed and to weep great globs of crocodile tears in anticipation of the funeral. The mourners seem to forget, or ignore, those smaller, conservatively financed family farms that are doing quite well, thank you, perhaps the best example of which is the humble, "backward," horse-powered Amish farm.

In 1985, in a speech I gave to an Ohio organization that was looking for low-cost ways to make farming profitable, I commiserated at length with the plight of financially depressed farmers. Two Amishmen approached me afterwards, offering mild criticism. "We have just finished one of our most financially successful years," one of them said. "It is only those farmers who have ignored common sense and traditional farming methods who are in trouble." He went on to explain that he belonged to a group of Amish who had, as an experiment, temporarily allowed its members to use tractors in the field. He also was making payments on land that he had recently purchased. In other words, he was staring at the same economic gun that was pointed at English farmers and he was still coming out ahead. "But," he said, "I'm going back to horses. They're more profitable."

From then on, I resolved to start cultivating the Amish as assiduously as they cultivated their fields. I had always taken our sorghum to Joe Bontrager's press in the Kenton area not far from our farm, so I knew something about the Amish knack for making money where mainstream farmers saw no opportunity. (Joe makes bent hickory rockers in winter.) We bought bulk foods and homemade angel food cake at the Petersheims' occasionally, so I knew how the Amish found ways to sell retail from their homes. We had sought advice about operating a woodworking shop at the Troyers' farm, so I was aware how the Amish were experienced in craft businesses as an adjunct to their farming. But now I expanded my horizons to include eastern Ohio, center of the largest Amish community in the world. My education in Amish economics began in earnest when I helped a neighbor haul hay to that area. If the Amish needed to buy extra feed for their livestock, they almost always chose to buy hay and raise the grain, rather than vice versa. The price of the hay was partially regained in the value of the manure, which enabled them to use less fertilizer. The manure also increased precious organic matter in their soils, a value beyond simple cost calculation. Grain farmers in my area who sold their straw and hay to the Amish were trading their soil fertility for fleeting cash gain while the Amish "banked" those products in their soil for everlasting returns.

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