Ties to the Farm Loosening for Amish

At first glance, Allen Troyer is typical of the Amish: living simply, traveling by horse and buggy and likely to have his sons follow him into the family business.

Except, as is true of a growing number of Amish, Troyer’s business isn’t farming.

Troyer, 33, runs a sawmill, one of dozens that dot the heart of northwestern Pennsylvania lumber country in Crawford County, about 30 miles southeast of Erie.

“I just never really had the urge for it,” Troyer said of farming.

Like farmers everywhere, Amish farmers are declining in numbers--spurred by low crop prices, rising land prices and more efficient and automated farm techniques that the Amish tend to eschew.

The Amish exodus from farming is “consistent, and it’s consistent across the nation,” said Donald B. Kraybill, a sociologist at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa.

Fewer than half the Amish families in Lancaster County, Pa., a center of the faith, now farm, and the figure is closer to 10% in Geauga County, Ohio, Kraybill said.

Andy Troyer, a New Order Amish man in Conneautville, Pa., said his community is made up of equal parts farmers, shop workers and business owners.

Andy Troyer, no relation to Allen, has been making and selling rope as a livelihood since 1977.

“Traditionally, [the Amish] would live on a farm and raise the family,” he said. “Dad could have 15 to 20 cows . . . and 500 chickens. He would raise his family . . . and pay off the farm. He could make money. Today that is gone.”

“Farming today is a business, and it used to be a way of life,” he said.

There are more than 1,500 Amish-owned businesses in Lancaster County, said Kraybill, author of “Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits.” The trend away from farming and toward business dates to the 1960s but has accelerated in the last 10 years, he said.

“In my judgment, this is the most significant and consequential change since the Amish immigrated to North America,” Kraybill said. “It increases their exposure to the outside world.”

“The problem is . . . these vocations put them closer to the village,” said Jim Fisher, an Edinboro University of Pennsylvania professor who wrote “Crimson Stain,” which detailed the 1993 killing of an Amish woman, Katie Gingerich, by her husband.

“It puts them in touch with telephones and power equipment. It sort of corrupts them to the benefits of modern technology, and they bring that to the farm,” Fisher said. “The Amish believe that God put them on the Earth to farm. Their entire social and cultural existence is tied to the farm.”

Andy Troyer said the different Amish groups have varying opinions about the change and which traditions are worth keeping.

The New Order Amish may be in a better position to stay grounded in farming because they embrace the use of electricity in barns and small tractors, which might allow them to compete in the marketplace, he said.

“If you are an [Old Amish] carpenter, you have a handsaw and a square. The other guy has a nailing gun and power saws,” Troyer said. “How can you compete?”

The same is true in farming, he said. “You can’t milk 30 cows by hand. It’s impossible, but yet all the milk sells for the same price.”