Modern Amish farming as ecological agriculture

Abstract

Critics of industrial agriculture and advocates of ecological agriculture have cited Amish farming as a model of stewardship and sustainability. Amish farming in St. Lawrence County, New York, embodied ecological agriculture in some respects but not others. In comparison with non‐Amish neighbors, Amish farms were smaller in scale, more diverse, and less integrated into the market economy. On the other hand, use of fertilizers and pesticides for crop production appeared to differ in kind, not amount. Amish farmers relied primarily on their own experience, not trade magazines or the local cooperative extension, for agricultural information. The high use of petroleum‐based inputs may have reflected the newness of Amish settlement in St. Lawrence County, a lack of awareness of the ecological impacts of these substances, or a shift away from traditional practices. In the self‐sufficiency of their lives based on subsistence and diversity, these Amish otherwise exemplified the productive and self‐regulatory characteristics of ecological agriculture