Can Amish and Mennonite Communities Save Us From Climate Change?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCTOBER 20, 2022 ON PATREON

The Amish community has always been integral for my family, and not just because of geographic proximity in a small, Middle Tennessee town where the stores and doctor’s offices have buggy parking and water troughs. We frequently purchase animals, furniture, bread and gardening supplies from families we know and return to year after year. In adulthood I realized the local community—part of a conservative Anabaptist religious group that left Europe after the Protestant Reformation—had many farming practices I admired and wanted to learn from after purchasing tomato seedlings from an Amish greenhouse and growing award-winning 3-pound fruits. As an Appalachian writer who cares deeply about sustainability and climate change, I discovered that growing my own food and starting a homestead could relieve my climate anxiety, and that the Amish practices I admired might just help me get there.

I’m not alone in my fears. A 2021 study of young people published in Nature found that most respondents were concerned about climate change, with nearly 60 percent saying they felt ‘very worried’ or ‘extremely worried’. Many associated negative emotions with climate change — the most commonly chosen were ‘sad’, ‘afraid’, ‘anxious’, ‘angry’ and ‘powerless’. Almost half of participants said feelings about climate change impacted their daily lives. In a world facing soil quality deterioration, water scarcity and food and supply chain insecurity those fears unfortunately make sense, but it’s possible to learn from groups who’ve relied on farming and communal living for generations.

While Amish and Mennonite practices vary from state to state, Ohio’s Amish Country states on their website that one key difference is that Amish individuals don’t own cars, while most Mennonites allow car ownership of some kind. Although Dr. David McConnell, professor of anthropology at the College of Wooster, says many Amish communities don’t necessarily believe climate change is created or affected by humans, their farming practices are still beneficial.

“It’s what we actually do that matters,” McConnell says. “So there is that disconnect we would see between Amish intentions, which are not ecological, and their actual practices. The fact is many of their practices are ecologically beneficial.”

McConnell says my local Tennessee Amish community would likely be considered Swartzentruber Amish, an Old Order community he thinks farms rather sustainably. According to Dr. Steven Nolt, professor of Anabaptist studies at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, some Anabaptists including the Amish moved to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, and from there spread into the Midwest and beyond. The Amish community in my county, for example, settled here in 1944 and has 14 church districts, according to Nolt. A second Anabaptist migration took Low German-speaking Mennonites into what is now Ukraine and Russia. Many of those Mennonites later made their way to the US and Canada in the 1870s, with some eventually working their way into Latin America and then back to the US by the late twentieth century.

A drive through illustrates large tanks for rainwater collection, cold frames to start seedlings early in the year, woodpiles covered with recycled cardboard and laundry drying naturally on long lines in the wind. Although much of the food scrap waste is given to chickens or pigs, some farmers also practice composting with additional materials. McConnell says simple pragmatism leads many Amish to make eco-friendly decisions and has spoken with Amish farmers who want to preserve nearby forests to sustain a steady supply of firewood.

Dr. Caroline Brock, associate teaching professor at the University of Missouri, says some Old Order Amish communities will engage in cover cropping, for example, which improves soil quality. Plain Anabaptists, who Brock says make decisions as church districts instead of as individuals, are a rapidly-growing US population group and use cover crops to prevent soil erosion and create fertility. McConnell says one Amish organic co-op custom creates soil amendments for farmers who test their soil in order to produce better crops and maintain soil quality. Other Mennonite or Amish communities use organic farming methods and crop rotation to preserve soil health, too.

“I think the actual practice, which in a way is what’s most important, [displays] a lot of interest in soil health,” Brock says. “Plain groups are really interested in learning more about that. If we can figure out more creative ways that aren’t focused on the individual, we may be able to work with the Amish and Mennonites more and more successfully.”

Those same groups also offer lessons in small-scale living and thoughtful adoption of new technologies. Nolt says Amish communities aren’t inherently averse to technology but don’t value scaling up the size or efficiency of farms and other goods production the same way English communities do. As such they think carefully before using radios, cars, large farm equipment or other modern inventions.

“The churches are small. They meet for worship in the homes of members, and once they get too many people to fit in one home, they’ll divide into multiple church districts,” Nolt says. “Schools are also small. Their approach to small scale is a product of technological limitations but it’s also a cause for technological limitations.”

That could mean less waste and fewer carbon emissions. It can also lead to less reliance on faulty supply chains and, in the event of a climate disaster, a broken global economy, according to McConnell. Although many Amish and Mennonite families shop at grocery stores they build, produce and consume many of their own goods including furniture, animals, shelter, food and clothing.

In my local community, families also help care for newborn babies and their mothers, bringing husbands and other family members into the household to cook and tackle chores. One Amish gentleman lost his wife to illness and married an adult woman who also needed a caretaker, showcasing how much they value sharing and communal practices. According to a 2021 New York Times report, co-housing and communal living can positively impact families and parents, and research during the pandemic has consistently shown that social isolation negatively impacts mental health.

“As we move into more uncertain times with climate change and so forth, more decentralized, somewhat self-sufficient communities can only be a good thing,” McConnell says.

Of course, not every Amish and Mennonite community exhibits perfect or even admirable farming practices. Some practice extractive farming that experts say is causing irreparable damage to the environment. That's why the “English,” as most non-Anabaptists in the US are known, can find both inspiration and cautionary tales about farming and community practices that could help us prepare for whatever comes next.

According to Abigail Carl-Klassen, an independent researcher and writer with family ties to local Mennonite groups, there has been conflict over clear-cutting forests and the intersection of indigenous land rights and usage in Mexico. A 2015 New York Times article chronicled the groundwater loss Mennonites created in Mexico before leaving by sucking up precious resources for thirsty crops, and Carl-Klassen says some Mennonites who settled in Belize were charged with illegal logging.

“My husband and I in 2013 were visiting friends. They said, ‘Wanna see something crazy?’ They have a lot of apple orchards and a group basically had dug this giant pit in the ground and were diverting the groundwater into it with no permits,” Carl-Klassen says. “Supposedly they’re paying a government official to do this.”

Carl-Klassen says stereotypes about Plain people can be harmful because the English may think of them as pastoral, all-natural and even simple. Not only is that not true, but following what's done in Mexico and Belize could make climate change worse. Brock also points out that many Amish communities are skeptical of the US government and COVID vaccinations, and McConnell says they often listen to conservative talk shows while waiting in a doctor’s office or at the grocery store.

Reduced news access and relative social isolation mean that future pandemics may hurt population numbers and isn’t exactly a model to follow. In addition, some groups aren’t able to recycle and burn lots of their trash instead.

To implement the most helpful practices in English communities and set aside the harmful ones, most of the experts I spoke to agreed that local, personal relationships are the way to go. Brock’s work has previously focused on establishing relationships between university extension offices and Amish or Mennonite communities, stating that when a new officer is hired they have to start all over again. Nolt says one way to get involved locally is to visit local Amish events like farmer’s markets, sales and even Horse Progress Days, a major event largely attended by Amish community members but is open to the public.

On an even smaller scale, the English may seek interaction and relationships through becoming steady customers of Amish families who sell goods. My mother returns again and again to the same baker and has even been invited into her home to check on a sick mother because she's a respected nurse in our town.

English communities can and do build solid relationships with Plain folk that involve the exchange of goods and information — but it’s important to respect religious wishes in communities that don’t allow photos, for example, or don’t like their children to speak to the English.

Plain communities are only human, and they make mistakes like the rest of us. Some exhibit farming practices we shouldn’t replicate, and some groups may be less open to social interaction and scientific advancements.

Still, English communities have plenty to learn about farming, gardening, animal care and soil quality as well as communal living and sharing. When we let go of tired, nostalgic stereotypes about the Amish and Mennonites we may just find climate change less frightening.