Amish Dedication to Farming and Adoption of Organic Dairy Systems - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 235

conventional farmers to not consider organic with an open mind. Anchoring and
“extremetization” can both lead to satisficing behaviors.

12.3 Field Methods

To study these complex decision making-processes within a blended oikonomia
and bounded rationality framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews. The
interviews focus on key questions about why the Amish farm and why they farm
the way they do particularly focusing on the decision to adopt organic dairy.
Oikonomia -bounded rationality plays out differently at the community, settlement
and household levels. The subtle and complex nature of the factors influencing
organic adoption decisions required detailed interviews with church leaders and
farmers after descriptive surveys were executed. Bounded rationality concepts
emerged from the farmer interviews following a grounded theory approach where
the theory is informed by the empirical data. Following the interviews, the data was
organized according to oikonomia and bounded rationality themes.
Southwest Wisconsin was selected for several reasons. About a quarter of the
state's Amish dairies are located in Southwest Wisconsin (Cross 2004 ). And, as
mentioned above, this region is an ideal location to study organic adoption decisions
since it has over 30 % of the state's organic dairy farms (Brock and Barham 2009 )
despite accounting for only roughly 10 % of the state's dairy farms.
Farm decision-making was studied among Amish and other local dairy farmers
based on interviews with 25 Amish farmers 9 as part of a larger sample which
included organic, conventional and managed grazing farmers outside of the Amish
community (Brock 2010 ). The sample was selected semi-randomly but was mod-
ified to ensure diversity in farming approaches. Amish farmers from the two
largest Amish settlements in the Kickapoo Valley, Hillsboro and Cashton 10 were
interviewed in person, for 40-90 min. There was also a concerted effort to get a mix
of organic and non-organic dairy farmers in the sample. Some key informants from
the Old Country Cheese Amish Co-op, who were not associated with the survey,
were also interviewed.
Many of the farmer interviews were arranged through stopping by the farmstead
un-announced and finding a suitable time to come back for an interview. The
majority of interviews were conducted between August of 2006 and June of 2008 by

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