Amish Dedication to Farming and Adoption of Organic Dairy Systems - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 228

state. Amish dairy farmers in the region may be only slightly more likely to be
'organic' as other dairy farmers in this particular region.
This might be surprising at first glance, as there is a common perception that
the word “Amish” is synonymous with the word “organic” or “sustainable” due to
their focus on simplicity and “natural” and “old-fashioned” style. More concretely,
the Amish seem like a good fit for adopting organic dairy systems given that they
use pasture as a source of feed, operate small-scale farms, and emphasize hand
labor over certain kinds of machinery for reasons we explore below. However, many
Amish farmers have also long since adopted “green revolution” technologies, such
as chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are not permitted under organic standards. 1
Since these technologies are not addressed in their code of rules ( Ordnung ) and
are not seen as a threat to their way of life, the Amish probably adopted these
technologies in an earlier era for similar reasons as non-Amish farmers (i.e. labor
saving, agronomic improvements, and/or economic and social pressures).
The complexity of organic dairy adoption decision-making within the Amish
context is the focus of this chapter. Simple individual rational decision-making
models are insufficient to understand organic dairy adoption decisions among the
Amish. Instead, it is essential to explore their religious and community motivations
for farming and for dairy farming in particular, and then with that background, we
can examine the adoption decision of organic dairy among the Amish. To explore
these questions in context, one needs to understand the particularities of their faith,
church and social structure and not only how those features shape their values but
also the internal and external constraints on information acquisition and processing
they face when considering systematic changes in the way they run their farms.
There is also diversity in decision-making contexts across Amish communities.
While they share common religious teachings and values, the establishment of local
Ordinance or Ordnung can lead to significant differences in rules and norms and
thereby create the basis for heterogeneous decisions in farming made by Amish
families across communities. This diversity can be seen in comparing the adoption
of organic dairy systems in two neighboring Old Order Amish communities in a
region of Southwest Wisconsin known as the Driftless region.
Old Order Amish dairy family farms are defined by their Anabaptist Christian 2
religious and cultural identity. As one Wisconsin Amish farmer stated, “confess[ing]
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 churches 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