Amish Dedication to Farming and Adoption of Organic Dairy Systems - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 242

of Cashton Amish committed to having a market for canned milk, non-refrigerated
milk storage on Amish farms. 15 Their intention was to ensure a future in dairy
farming for themselves and future generations of Amish by marketing their own
cheese from the canned milk.
Old Country Cheese continues to be the only marketing outlet for canned
milk as all other milk buyers in the area require farmers to acquire a bulk tank.
Currently, a number of other Amish settlements sell their milk to Old Country
Cheese. The Cashton Amish established the board structure, continue to manage
it, and have control over major decisions including decisions around establishing
and maintaining an organic line. The following discussion focuses on the views of
a few Cashton Amish elders in particular because they in effect have the marketing
decision making power over all of the other Amish dairy farmers (i.e. in Hillsboro
and other settlements) who sell their milk to Old Country cheese.
At the time of the study, Old Country Cheese Co-op was marketing some of its
cheese organically, but they had not kept a consistent commitment to the organic
line in previous years. This lack of consistency is partly due to the negative attitudes
about organic among some of the Cashton Amish elders who have influence on the
board. This lack of consistency is a key point because it means that some Amish
farmers could go through the expense of converting to organic, a 3 year certification
process, but not have a market for their milk since Old Country Cheese is the
only marketing outlet for organic canned milk. The Old Country Cheese co-op was
involved with the organic market two times in the past 10 years -once in 2004 and
once since 2006. It is important to understand the decision making process of key
leaders on the board as it impacts the ability of the whole community to market
organically.
For some of the key leaders, organic dairy was viewed as a potential threat to
some key Amish values so value loss aversion was at play in various ways. For
example, the Amish have an idea of unity or “being one body” in a scriptural
sense. One of their concerns with organic was that some members of the community
may be receiving higher pay prices for organics than non-adopters, and this would
then translate to not everyone being on an equal plane. If some of the farmers
became organic, and prospered, this could challenge the importance of humility and
equality which are core values for the Amish people. Another example of a threat to
unity was the idea that organic certification created a system where neighbors were
supposed to report others who were cheating.
Another value within many Amish communities is to minimize interactions with
the government. This value anchoring can be explained by negative associations
with government affiliation, which is in turn related to the Amish history of
persecution and desire to remain autonomous from political affairs. Their alternative
goal is to focus their allegiance with God and their community. One Amish elder
was falsely convinced that the Organic Valley cooperative was able to expand into

15 Some other settlements in eastern states adopted bulk tanks as early as the 1969 (Kraybill and