Thesis - Chapter 2 - Literature Review

 CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW 

            The Old Order Amish may be a living example of a non-modern, sustainable culture.  They have retained their distinctive agricultural lifestyle in the face of modernizing forces that have disenfranchised not only indigenous people, but also American family farmers.  While their cultural persistence in the midst of an assimilative dominant culture is impressive in itself, the Amish have attracted attention from environmentally-concerned people who see in them the possibility of an ecologically sustainable community.  The task of this chapter is to study the literature that leads people to think that the Amish may be an ecologically sustainable community.  The Amish culture is described in terms of its history, worldview, institutions, and farming practices.

Brief History of the Old Order Amish

            The Old Order Amish number approximately 140,000 and live primarily in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana (Hostetler, 1993).  They have their origins in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, and the Alsace region of France) and are a product of the Anabaptist wing of the 16th century Reformation.  Anabaptists rejected the practice of infant baptism, which was the means by which the state assigned citizenship and levied taxes.  This decision, along with their refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of the state in other crucial matters such as military service, led to persecution of the Anabaptists by the Catholic and Lutheran state churches.  In the face of persecution, Anabaptists fled into the foothills and mountains of central Europe in order to avoid confrontation and martyrdom, but the church persisted and grew, nevertheless.

            The Amish formed as a distinct group in 1693.  Jacob Amman, a Mennonite leader, split from the Swiss Mennonites (one of the original Anabaptist groups) over disagreements about how to maintain the purity of the church.  Amman felt that Christian believers should live moral, godly lives; those who did not live up to the community standards should be expelled from the church and shunned.  The other Mennonite leaders were growing more lenient, allowing errant individuals to remain in fellowship with the congregation.

            Historians have noted that the Amish (and the Anabaptists in general) developed their agricultural lifestyle after being forced off of their land and onto poorer hinterlands (Hostetler, 1993; Séguy, 1973).  This led them to experiment, and they developed crop rotation, the use of natural fertilizers like clover and alfalfa (to increase soil fertility), and stable feeding of cattle before other central European agricultural communities (Kollmorgen, 1943).

            Many Amish migrated to the United States in the early to mid-1700s, and again in the early 1800s, because of ongoing political persecution and marginalization, economic hardship, and regional conflicts.  These migrations were crucial to the Amish, for if they had remained in Europe, researchers believe they would not have survived as a distinct subculture (Hostetler, 1993).  No Amish congregations exist in Europe today; all remnants have lost their Amish identity, assimilating into other Christian groups.

Modern Views of the Amish

            The popular modern view of the Amish is one of a visually distinctive people.  They are rural and agricultural, preferring farming as a way of life.  They drive horses and buggies rather than cars.  The men wear untrimmed beards (but no mustaches) and use suspenders rather than belts, while the women wear bonnets and plain, dark-colored dresses.  They use horses rather than tractors to plow the fields.  They speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect.  Their appearance as “pre-modern” or “backward” remnants of a bygone era proves to be a great tourist draw, attracting many city-dwellers to visit these anachronistic oddities and, through them, to experience vicariously the rural idyll.  In recent years, the Amish have even begun to be darlings of pop culture, with Amish characters featured in movies such as Witness, Kingpin, and For Richer or Poorer, and in “Weird Al” Yankovic’s music video, Amish Paradise.  The Amish aura spreads far and wide; Lane Community College, located in Eugene, Ore., over 2,000 miles from the major centers of Amish life, offers a class on “Amish Culture: The Complexities of Simplicity.”

            Meanwhile, the Amish have also gained attention from a more serious front: environmentalists.  Concerned about the effects of modern U.S. society on the natural world, a number of writers, academics, and activists have looked more closely at the Amish to see if they could be used as a possible model of a more benign relationship with the more-than-human world.  The Amish have been cited as living examples of E.F. Schumacher’s “frugal community” (Foster, 1981), their agriculture has been compared to alternative/organic/sustainable agriculture (Craumer, 1979; Grønvold, 1996; Stinner et al., 1989; Zook, 1994), and their careful examination of science and technology has been compared to Rachel Carson’s critiques of the unquestioned use of chemicals (Daniel, 1993).  In addition, Wendell Berry, a well-known author/farmer who writes prolifically about the importance of maintaining strong rural, agricultural communities, lauds the Amish and what he calls their “Christian agriculture, formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make.  The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill” (Berry, 1986, p. 213).  In a similar vein, Mother Earth News featured the Amish in a special section on “Environmentalism and Spirituality” because “they demonstrate ¼ that spiritual motivation can, indeed, lead to positive ecological acts” (Stone, 1989, p. 60).  And recently, a connection has been drawn between the Amish and the popular ecological concept of biodiversity (Moore et al., in press).

Ecologically-Relevant Cultural Components of the Amish

Amish Worldview

            The Amish worldview is based on a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible. As an example of this literalism, only six percent of Amish surveyed in one study disagreed with the idea that the Earth was only 6,000 years old (Rechlin, 1986).  This a-scientific worldview sees the physical world as God’s good Creation, beautiful and orderly (Hostetler, 1993).

            Since there are many other groups who consider themselves Christian (and some that are also literalists) but who do not share the Amish people’s strict and distinctive beliefs, some other factor must also be at work.  Indeed, the Amish interpret the Bible through the lens of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith (Gallagher, 1981).  Written in 1632, this document outlined the basic Anabaptist beliefs about God, Jesus, humanity, and the importance of humanity’s obedience to God the Creator.  The Confession also includes guidelines showing Christians how to avoid sin and thereby receive salvation.  These guidelines include explicit lifestyle expectations, many of which derive from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7) and from the letters of the Apostle Paul.

            An important Amish cultural and spiritual attitude flows from New Testament descriptions of obedient living.  Gelassenheit, or yielding to a higher authority, provides the underlying foundation of Amish society.  According to Kraybill (1998), this attitude “reflects the most fundamental difference between Old Order culture and modern values” (p. 102).  Gelassenheit allows the church community to cohere and to function smoothly by encouraging Amish individuals to put personal ambition and pride second to the needs of the community.

            The Amish tend to give more weight to the New Testament of the Bible, but they still take the Genesis creation story very seriously, especially the command “to till and keep” God’s Creation.  In fact, they consider stewardship to be a moral responsibility, one with salvific implications; as one Amish man put it, “It helps you act ecologically if you know you’re going to hell if you don’t” (Stone, 1989, p. 60).

            Being a Christian group, the Amish must face Lynn White, Jr.’s oft-cited critique that Genesis’ command to humans to “have dominion” over Creation leads to Christianity being the root cause of the ecological crisis (White, 1967).  In a study of a northern Indiana Amish community, only 16 percent of the Amish disagreed with the statement, “God gave us the world and all its creatures and plants to use and dominate” (Rechlin, 1976, p. 145).  This attitude would seem to support White’s view that Christians in general, and the Amish in particular, are anthropocentric.  The Amish have no qualms about using domesticated animals for transportation, farming, or food since they believe that God told them to rule Creation.  However, that rule is tempered and guided by the command “to till and keep,” and by God’s ownership of the land.  Creation is ultimately God’s, and humans don’t have the right to damage God’s world.

            The Amish concern with stewardship and obedience to God may indicate a theocentric worldview, in marked contrast to the popular anthropocentric-ecocentric dichotomy discussed in environmental circles.  A number of Christian theologians see true stewardship as essentially theocentric, where God is the Source of all life and humans are only part of the whole (Young, 1997).  Theocentrism stands in opposition to the humanistic assertions of anthropocentrism.

            While theologians and environmentalists will continue to debate the merits of theocentrism versus ecocentrism, it is apparent that theocentrism can lead to ecologically positive attitudes.  For example, the study cited above also found the Amish strongly agreeing with the idea that “on earth, men as well as animals, the winds and rains, and all things work together according to a plan which God has made” (Rechlin, 1976, p. 145, emphasis mine).  This statement sounds quite ecological and theocentric.  Indeed, at least some Amish people consider their “community” to include the land and all of its residents (Kline, 1990), which seems somewhat akin to Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” (Leopold, 1974). 

            Even when the Amish feel connected to the land, though, their religion still comes first.  In discussing his home and the possible necessity of moving, one Amish man said, “All the roots are here.  Leaving here would be like pulling up a plant by the roots.  But I would do that, if that’s what it takes, before we give up our faith” (Ericksen et al., 1980, p. 66).

            Another scriptural influence that affects the Amish use of technology, and thus their ecological impact, is their concern with worldliness.  Two passages from the Apostle Paul’s New Testament letters lie at the foundation of this belief: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2), and “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness” (2 Corinthians 6:14).  These passages emphasize the duality of the world (good and evil, obedience and disobedience) and the need for Christians to separate themselves from the unrighteous world, thereby distinguishing themselves as people of God.  The Amish have interpreted these passages to mean that they should maintain distinct material and spiritual differences between themselves and the “world” (Hostetler, 1993).  Nonresistance, or non-participation in the government (especially the military), is one result of this belief, which they share with some Mennonite groups.  However, the Amish have taken the idea of separation further than many Christians, to include a prohibition on many forms of modern technology.  Their lives are full of visible and not-so-visible examples of how they are not of this world (at least not of the modern United States).  The most obvious difference is their unwillingness to own cars.  However, the arguably most significant break with modern society is their decision to remain “off the grid.”  The Amish do not use centralized electricity, nor do they have telephones in their homes.  Both of these are examples of refusing to be “yoked together with unbelievers.”

            Jesus’ admonition to love one’s neighbors is also considered to be an ecologically significant ethical norm.  Many modern actions involve far-reaching impacts, such as the use of pesticides that show up in rain and groundwater, and the use of electricity which supports (at least in the Appalachian region) strip-mining of coal, the destruction of farms, and the onset of acid rain.  David Kline, an Amish writer, asks, “Can you love your neighbor and do this [use pesticides]?” (1990, p. xviii).

            The rural presence of the Amish is not merely an accident; it has become a part of their worldview.  The Amish believe it is easier to live a Christian life in rural areas, and that big cities tempt people to a life of immorality (Rechlin, 1976).  Also, the Amish feel closer to God when they are working in the field or walking in the forest (Hostetler, 1993).  Thus, while there may be no scriptural prohibition about living in a city, the Amish feel that it is essential to their Christian life that they retain their rural character. 

            In an era in which American children are more likely to know how to use computers than how to grow food and will likely spend more time playing Nintendo than experiencing nature, the Amish people’s rural lifestyle offers an alternative to an out-of-touch urban/suburban world.  Assuming that part of the environmental problem with modern society is its alienation from the natural world, the Amish predisposition for a rural lifestyle could be a positive model for re-imbedding human society in the natural world. 

Amish Institutions

            Amish institutions, while not overtly ecological, play a vital role in perpetuating the Amish culture as a distinct subculture within modern U.S. society.  Thus, if the Amish lifestyle of sustainable agriculture and conservative consumption is truly more ecologically sustainable than the majority society, the institutions which preserve this sustainable community ought to be considered of primary ecological significance.  Long-lasting indigenous cultures like the Australian Aborigines and the North American Cree are often considered to be ecologically sustainable, but they haven’t necessarily been able to thrive next to the dominant culture (Kinsley, 1995).  A key question that arises, then, is how are the Amish able to successfully maintain their cultural particularity within an assimilative dominant culture?  Their success is clear; the Amish have been doubling in population every 25 to 30 years since the turn of the century and geographically expanding, yet staying in farming and maintaining reasonable prosperity.

            The Amish, who shun the intervention of government institutions, have two primary internal institutions: family and community (Berry, 1986).  The extended family is the most important social unit in Amish life, and it takes a strong community to support strong families.  The issue of modern technology and its place in Amish life is inextricably tied to the Amish concern for their communities.  Modern technology is not rejected simply because it is new or produced by the “world,” nor because the Amish dislike high-tech gadgetry.  The Amish apply what could be considered a version of the environmentally popular “precautionary principle” to all new technologies; they reject technologies that have the potential of hindering their efforts to do God’s will (Gallagher, 1981).  According to Hostetler (1993), “Community-building is central to the redemptive process; salvation is not an individualistic effort” (p. 75).  Thus, technologies such as motor vehicles, televisions, and telephones that threaten to disrupt the viability and connectivity of the redemptive community are rejected. 

            To the Amish, the persistence and vitality of their communities has incredible spiritual significance.  The Amish community is not simply a sociological group; to them it is, in the Apostle Paul’s terms, “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

            Since community preservation is so important, the Amish have developed strong boundary-maintenance tools.  Rules of behavior are necessary to maintain conformity to community standards and, thus, to maintain the unity of the group.  The Amish recognize that an individual can introduce change into the community through personal decisions, change which could threaten the stability and persistence of their community.  If one person purchases a car and remains in the group, for example, others will gradually follow that lead.  In order to keep this from happening, the Amish have used an unwritten rulebook called the Ordnung.  Each church district (approximately 30 families) has its own Ordnung, which guides the behavior of the community.  The Ordnung is a significant ethical code; break it and face excommunication and Meidung, or shunning.  Once excommunicated, no one from the community, not even one’s immediate family, is allowed to speak with the offending person (Hostetler, 1993).

            Amish life is quite decentralized and self-sufficient, thanks to the lack of large, overwhelming institutions (Foster, 1981).  This leads to development of different practices depending on the ecological niche in which they find themselves.  In the Great Plains, for example, Hostetler (1980) found that the use of tractors became necessary for Amish agricultural survival on large, flat tracts of land.  The fact that each church district has its own Ordnung, and that each Ordnung can be changed by consensus decision, allows for this kind of variability and adaptation to the environment.  Sometimes the shapes of church districts on the landscape are even related to the local watershed geography (Moore et al., in press).  The self-sufficiency and regional variation (depending on environmental conditions) inherent in the church district system seem rather similar to the environmental concept of bioregionalism.

Amish Practices

            Amish practices that are ecologically positive owe their origin and their strength to both Amish worldviews and institutions, as well as to history and the ecological niche in which they find themselves.  The direction of influence among the three main categories is not always clear; the category boundaries themselves are also quite fluid.  In other words, the whole of Amish culture is not cleanly divisible into its parts.  Even so, we can discuss the Amish practice of agriculture as one which defines who they are as a people, and one which best exemplifies their ecologically sustainable impact.

Agriculture

            Amish agriculture is in some ways simply pre-World War II agriculture (Logsdon, 1988).  However, it is not “backwards,” at least not in the sense that it is unsuccessful.  The fact that many Amish have persisted in small-scale, diversified agriculture in an age in which agribusiness claims farmers must “get big or get out” demonstrates the success of their practices.  This success has attracted many people who are interested in finding sustainable alternatives to modern agriculture, Wendell Berry being the most prominent.

            Berry likes Amish agriculture for a number of reasons.  “They are far more productive than consumptive, they support families and communities, and they preserve and improve the land” (Berry, 1981, p. xiv).  The Amish also endeavor to pass on the land to the next generation, using little fossil fuel and few pesticides and fertilizers.  It should be noted, however, that many Amish do not practice strictly organic agriculture; according to at least two studies, their use of inputs is minimal, but they do not avoid them entirely (Blake et al., 1997; Craumer, 1977).

            The diversified farm of the Amish starts with a diverse homestead.  Instead of a cash crop monoculture, most Amish farms are a mixture of crops, pasture, and woodlots; animal husbandry is nearly always practiced and is often the primary source of income.  Diversity of crops and livestock leads to a harmony, as the livestock waste feeds the crops, and the crops and pastureland feed the livestock.           

            On the Amish farm, ecological diversity includes humans.  Sometimes environmentalists are accused of being misanthropic in their love for nature; their support for removing humans from wilderness areas and their distaste for resource-based communities are two related examples.  In response to these criticisms, one writer suggests that environmentalists ought to study the way the Amish work with, and include humans as part of, nature (Stone, 1989).  Kline, the previously-mentioned Amish writer, echoes those who decry the removal of indigenous people from wilderness areas.  He suggests that if Amish farmers were removed to make way for a “wildlife area” there would be less wildlife than before.  To support his idea, he once counted, nesting around his farm buildings, 1,800 young of 13 species (Kline, 1990, p. xx).  This is only a small portion of the birds that live in the surrounding fields, woods, and riparian areas.  In the last 25 years, he has seen 175 bird species reside at or fly over his 120-acre farm in east-central Ohio (Kline, 1997, p. 8).

            Other significant components of Amish farming include crop rotations and the use of horses rather than tractors.  Crop rotations, traditionally a four-year cycle involving corn, oats, wheat, and hay, include legumes, which reduce the need for purchased fertilizers even further than the use of animal manure.  Rotations tend to inhibit insect pests since they can’t “camp out” on a monoculture from season to season.  Rotations and cultivation also keep the weed species to a minimum, with little need for herbicides except in spot application.  Traditional Amish practices once again look similar to a modern environmentally friendly practice: Integrated Pest Management.

            The use of horses instead of tractors is ecologically beneficial for a number of reasons.  Horse-drawn machinery weighs much less than tractor-drawn machinery, leading to a reduction in soil compaction (Jackson, 1988).  Horse waste can be plowed back into the field as a cheap source of nitrogen, and possibly produces fewer greenhouse gases than a tractor’s waste (although this is mostly conjecture).  Horse “fuel” consists of feed that can be grown on the farm, rather than fossil fuel, a non-renewable resource.  Horses, being biological creatures rather than mechanical ones, procreate, allowing the farmers themselves to have more control over the supply.  As one Amish man said, “When John Deeres start having baby John Deeres, then maybe I might get envious of tractor farmers” (Logsdon, 1988, p. 28).  But beyond the issues of energy efficiency and cost-benefit analyses, Wendell Berry believes that horse farming works well precisely because horses are living creatures: “[Horses] fit harmoniously into a pattern of relationships that are necessarily biological, and that rhyme analogically from ecosystem to crop, from field to farmer” (Berry, 1983, p. 75).

            Amish farms have even been shown, in quantitative studies, to be more energy efficient than typical modern farms.  Two studies, undertaken during the “energy crisis” of the late 1970s, compared the efficiency and productivity of Amish farms to that of modern farms in different regions of the country (Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin) to see whether the Amish offered a viable alternative to agribusiness in the face of potential future energy scarcity (Craumer, 1979; Johnson et al., 1977).  The researchers assumed that the Amish would be more energy efficient, but that this increased efficiency would come at the cost of decreased productivity.  Energy efficiency ratios were calculated by dividing the energy output (crops, animal products) by the energy input (feed, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides, machinery, repairs, etc.).  Productivity was determined by dividing total output by the size of the farm.  In Pennsylvania, typical Amish farms were two to three times more efficient than modern farms, but just as productive per hectare as modern farms.  (Farmers from the Nebraska Church, a more conservative Amish sect that uses even less technology and inputs than their fellow Amish, were the most efficient, but only about one-half as productive as the other Amish and modern farmers.)  In Illinois, however, where land is flat and farms are large, the Amish were about equivalent in efficiency, but only half as productive as the modern farmers.  In Wisconsin, the Amish were four to six times as efficient but only 65 to 80 percent as productive as their modern counterparts.  From a cultural ecology perspective, Amish culture seems well-adapted to the diverse landscape of central Pennsylvania, yet cannot utilize the Illinois landscape as efficiently and productively as their neighbors, who use modern agricultural technology (Johnson et al., 1977).  Thus, in certain locations, the Amish can be more efficient than modern farmers without sacrificing productivity; in the Farm Belt, however, modern agricultural technology is just as efficient as – and considerably more productive than – Amish methods.

            To sum up the positive nature of Amish agriculture, Pete Daniel (1993) writes, “The limited and considered use of science and technology by the Amish suggests an alternative to the uncritical adoption of capital-intensive farming methods that cause human displacement and ecological damage” (p. 52).

Household

            The Amish concern for a simple lifestyle also contributes to their low environmental impact.  Jesus’ example of owning very little and condemning greed combines with the Amish reality of low technological capability to result in extremely low energy consumption by Amish households.  In the Johnson et al. (1977) study, household energy use for the average Amish farm family was only one-tenth the amount used by the average American farm family.  “If the Amish are conservationists,” the researchers claim, “it is primarily in their consumption pattern.  Their major contribution to energy conservation is in the limited demands they make on available resources to support their way of life” (Johnson et al.,1977, p. 378).  One Amish woman, tracking her household spending for one month in 1987, spent only $400 for a family of seven, which included cooking and heating fuel, food, clothing, hardware, toiletries, transportation, and community insurance (Logsdon, 1988).  Overconsumption is not generally a problem in the Amish community; they could write the primer on the eco-vogue topic, “voluntary simplicity.”

Environmental Critiques of the Amish

            While to some the Amish are the new environmental heroes, they do not escape criticism.  The area for which they receive the most consistent criticism is their high fertility.  Amish women each have an average of seven children, which leads to the doubling of Amish population every 25 years or so (Hostetler, 1993).  Amish demography charts resemble those of developing countries (e.g., Hewner, 1998).  However, large families appear to be intimately associated with the Amish community’s agricultural way of life.  Amish agriculture requires large amounts of labor.  Children are significant assets in helping to run a farm.  In fact, a recent study has found that Amish families whose household heads work off-farm have fewer children (Wasao and Donnermeyer, 1996).

            The Amish reproductive success demonstrates that they are a successful non-modern group.  They are growing even though they are unsupported by the mainstream U.S. culture.  While some environmentalists are disturbed by the Amish people’s copious offspring, they could take heart in the fact that a group that challenges the mentality of modern America is actually thriving.

            While the rapid population growth of the Amish may not have global implications, it does lead to problems at a local level.  Amish communities expand rapidly, as present farm owners buy or subdivide new farms for their children.  As they do, land prices skyrocket and the amount of available land decreases.  Coupled with rapid suburban development in some Amish settlements, such as Lancaster County, Pa., this situation poses a dilemma for Amish culture.  When an Amish family cannot set their children up on a farm, it usually leads to one of three results: one, out-migration or conversion to another church; two, a modification of lifestyle, such as non-agricultural jobs or more intensive farming on highly subdivided farms; or three, a reduction of fertility.  “The Amish have had a culture that is intimately adapted to the environment,” write Ericksen et al. (1980, p. 67).  “It is from the increasing contradiction between the cultural tradition and the ecology that change can be expected to appear.”  In other words, population pressures in local areas can overtax or damage ecosystems, resulting in cultural change, which is a traditional environmentalist critique.

            Another environmental critique of the Amish involves water pollution caused by Amish farming practices.  Population pressures also exacerbate this problem.  Smaller farms and higher concentrations of animals lead to an overabundance of manure, which is often applied to the soil on the basis of disposal needs rather than on crop nutrient needs.  Heavy application, combined with winter manure spreading on frozen ground, leads to pollution of local wells, waterways, and, in the case of Pennsylvania Amish, the Chesapeake Bay.  The Amish have recently been facing more active enforcement of environmental restrictions related to manure management (Place, 1993).

            While nutrient pollution is hardly confined to the Amish, the Amish may be more concerned about the problem than other farmers, at least in some cases.  A study in Ohio has shown that the Amish are “significantly more likely than non-Amish to be aware of potential ground water pollution problems and to be more willing to act to prevent degradation of the resource” (Sommers and Napier, 1993, p. 138).  Thus, even though the Amish are thought to be socially isolated and unconcerned about problems in the larger society, environmental problems included, perhaps this is an overgeneralization.  However, it must be noted that the “Amish” sample (n=52) in this study consisted of a large number of Mennonites (n=25), who are more connected to the world and may be more aware of its issues and problems (Sommers and Napier, 1993, p. 131).  Sommers and Napier’s (1993) findings would suggest that if nutrient pollution does prove to be a problem in Amish communities, they will know that and correct it as soon as possible.  More research needs to be performed to see if Amish in other areas share these attitudes and/or this level of awareness.

            Regulatory concerns sometimes lead to clashes between the Amish and local governments.  Soil conservation is an important ecological concern, considering that soil erosion is a widespread problem for modern agriculture.  One method used to estimate soil loss calculates that the Ohio Amish are losing 7-15 tons of topsoil/acre/year (Jackson, 1988, p. 483).  Thus the Soil Conservation Service counsels the Amish to switch from traditional tilling methods to “no-till” agriculture.  While no-till agriculture reduces soil loss and promises “green fields forever,” the benefits of reduced erosion are balanced by the burdens of increased herbicide use and subsequent pollution (Kline, 1990).  In a study comparing traditional Amish plowing to no-till agriculture, Jackson (1988) found that the Amish farm had significantly higher levels of organic matter in the soil, reduced soil compaction, and higher infiltration rates than the no-till farm.  Jackson concludes that the method by which soil loss is estimated is probably inaccurate in the case of the Ohio Amish.

            Land use planners can conflict with Amish communities, even when they are ostensibly trying to help.  Agricultural zoning protects the Amish farming lifestyle by requiring low residential densities and restricting commercial uses of property in agricultural areas.  However, these restrictions can also cause problems for the Amish, who are increasingly running small businesses out of their homes.  As land grows scarce, cottage industries become more prominent in Amish communities, leading the Amish to appeal to local governments to amend their zoning laws to allow such small businesses (Place, 1993).  Although they have not yet led to rampant business development in Amish country, such amendments weaken the restrictions meant to protect the rural character of the community.

            In a similar vein, the amount of permits and plans and studies needed in order to do any kind of land development can sometimes frustrate the Amish.  Even when these regulatory processes are used to prevent rural development from damaging the rural environment, the Amish can often find themselves in opposition to the laws.  There have been a number of cases where Amish people were cited and even jailed for failing to obtain the proper permits before adding on to a building or installing a privy.  Often the local authorities even agree that no harm is being done to the environment by the prohibited Amish activity, yet the regulation (written for more dense developments and a higher level of per capita consumption) is enforced.  Sometimes the regulations directly conflict with a traditional cultural practice, such as adding on a “grossdaddi” (grandfather) house for retired parents.  In Lancaster County, Pa., families must jump through eight regulatory hoops (plans and permits) before they may begin building such an addition (Place, 1993).

The Amish as a Sustainable Culture

            In order to consider whether the Amish live up to their billing as a sustainable culture, a clarification of sustainability is needed.  Noted anthropologist John W. Bennett (1993) writes that sustainability requires two basic achievements, “the maintenance of productivity of a resource base” and “the stability of a particular socioeconomic regime that supported this [maintenance of productivity]” (p. 167).  It is helpful, then, to discuss the sustainability of the Amish in terms of these concepts.

            When it comes to maintaining the productivity of their resource base, the Amish are quite effective.  Out of 228 identified Amish settlements, 18 were formed prior to 1900.  While this number may seem small, these 18 settlements account for 572 of 1,020 church districts.  The top 10 existing Amish settlements in terms of size were all formed before 1900 (Garrett, 1996).  These statistics demonstrate the persistence of Amish farming over the centuries.  If the Amish were not able to maintain the productivity of the soil, they would not have survived this long as an agricultural people. 

            As we have discussed, Amish agriculture is considered to be ecologically sound.  In many anecdotal cases, the Amish have bought worn-out and supposedly non-farmable land from other farmers and proceeded to make a successful living (Berry, 1986).  As one researcher has noted, “For the Amish, soil longevity has always been a priority” (Jackson, 1988, p. 485).  Another said, “The Amish have demonstrated for several hundred years that what is needed to succeed is to care enough about the land and to treat it as one would treat one’s offspring” (Zook, 1994, p. 28).

            Thus the conservationist agricultural practices of the Amish are not at issue; however, we are faced with the reality that agricultural land used to be a “natural” community of non- or semi-domesticated creatures.  In the eyes of preservationists, who would like to see the natural world as it used to be prior to European alteration of the landscape, the Amish conversion of land to agricultural use is, at best, a necessary evil, and, at worst, a blight on the landscape.  In Kishacoquillas Valley, Pa., very little riparian vegetation remains along the creeks, and the only “natural” vegetation lies on the hillsides (Brooks, 1997).  The issue of whether environmentalists should focus on sustainable management of resources and positive examples of human-nature interaction, or on the protection of “wild” nature, is still an open and highly contentious question, however, and one which will not be resolved here.

            Turning to the question of sustainability in regards to the stability of a “particular socioeconomic regime” that supports ongoing productivity of a resource, the Amish receive even higher marks.  For it is the cultural persistence and long-term stability of the Amish in the midst of a “melting pot” dominant culture that is truly amazing.  Writing about a northern Indiana Amish settlement, Pratt (1998) notes, “Relative to other groups, and evaluation has to be relative, they have achieved a sect integrity that few can match” (p. 294).  While much of American agriculture grew ever larger and less concerned with the health of the land, Amish agriculture remained small, energy efficient, healthy, and based on lasting cultural values.  Much of this long-term stability can be attributed to the Amish worldviews and institutions previously discussed.  Another aspect of social stability involves the overriding concern that Amish families have for providing land and a livelihood for their children.  One researcher showed that, in Iowa in the 1800s, the Amish actually sacrificed productivity and current income in order to invest heavily in the next generation and provide their children with enough land (Cosgel, 1993).  This “Bequest Motive,” as Cosgel (1993) called it, also increased the survival of the religion and the stability of the community.  Like many indigenous cultures that consider how their actions will affect their descendants to the “seventh generation,” the Amish consciously choose to support the long-term success of their culture.

            Environmentalists are still learning the importance of cultural stability to a healthy and sustainable environment.  Stoltzfus (1973) writes that the Amish can provide the concerned environmentalist with a possible answer to the particularly American problem of materialism and overconsumption.  To create a sustainable society, we will need both alternate engineering technologies and alternate social and personal satisfactions.  The American technological society is much more adept at developing more effective engineering technologies, and, indeed, many environmentalists (represented by Vice President Al Gore) believe that all we need to do is improve our technologies and the Earth can be balanced anew.  However, for those environmentalists who think that American consumption patterns are at least partly to blame for the ecological problems we are experiencing, the Amish offer a model that replaces the modern desire for high-tech “toys” with a renewed connection with one’s family and community.  This may be too simple to convince children to give up video games and parents to give up sports cars, but at least in the Amish culture, individuals derive much of their personal satisfaction from connections to the family.

            The literature discussing the Amish appears to indicate that their culture does indeed contain elements of sustainability.  However, direct empirical comparisons of the Amish with neighboring rural farmers are quite rare.  Also, explanations for sustainable Amish behavior are often rather vague.  Thus it remains somewhat unclear whether Amish “sustainability” is a result of cultural particularity or is rather an artifact of enduring rural values shared by other rural communities.

            This study endeavors to test this matter further by comparing the farming practices of the Amish with neighboring farmers in a relatively intact rural community in central Pennsylvania.  A survey of general ecological beliefs examines the underlying reasons for any observed differences in agricultural practices.