INTERCOURSE, Pa., Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The Amish dress in a plain 19th-century style, cannot possess a car, have no use for inventions like electricity and do not pay Social Security taxes. All that does not mean that they are not industrious and prolific, or that they are isolated from the madding crowd of globalization. They own some of the most productive farm soils in the United States; Amish arts and crafts are profusely advertised and can be purchased over the Internet.
In Lancaster County -- where one of the most important Amish communities is located -- there are proximately 4,800 small farms. That means more small farms than in any other county in the United States. About 2,000 of these farms are dairy ranches, with the remaining 2,800 produce poultry and pork products. The region generates more milk, eggs and poultry than any other county in the United States. It is fourth-ranked in hog production. In spite of being one of the most intensely farmed, highly productive agricultural regions, Lancaster County still has to bring in feed. This is due to the large amount of animals (chicken and hogs, especially) in confinement. In an average year, the county imports about 600,000 tons of shell corn, most of which comes from Ohio and Indiana. Millions of pounds of hay come in from as far away as Canada.
Evidences of Amish archaic customs are scattered all over the region. One-horse calashes go up and down the roads, all types of antique machinery rest on the field verges. Amish plow fields with mules, instead of tractors.
With these low-tech instruments, Amish farmers run 1,500 farms in Lancaster. But agriculture and cattle raising are not the only productive activities the Amish people are engaged in. Here only about 50 percent of people using horses for transportation make their living from farming. Others are builders, grocery sellers, dry goods dealers, harness makers, blacksmiths, carpenters, equipment dealers, health foods traders and bookkeepers. Amish do not usually pursue careers requiring higher education.
Most Amish homes have kitchens with gas stoves, refrigerators, heaters, showers and indoor toilets. Fans, sewing machines and other items that may require electricity are usually run with compressed air motors. Households may include a diesel engine, too. Windmills are less and less common. Electric fences are used on the farms by a small solar panel and battery.
The traditions and life style of the Amish community, their long-term commitment to the land they farm and their avoidance of technology show that there is an alternative to the way the rest of the world lives. Using no electricity, just a few telephones, no computers or fax machines and traveling by their preferred method of horse and buggy, the Amish have carved out their particular niche in America.
The Amish people have also managed to preserve their status in other ways. In 1989, Congress passed a law permitted self-employed members of certain religious faiths to treat their self-employed earnings as eligible income, even though they are exempt from self-employment tax. This was done to allow members of certain religious faiths to deduct contributions to individual retirement accounts from their taxes. However, a different definition of "earned income" for other qualified plans make impossible for Amish to deduct contributions to Keogh and SEP, and Simple IRA plans. But expanded retirement options for the Amish recently gained the approval of Congress, and have been signed into law by President George W. Bush. The legislation corrects the provision in the tax code that previously excluded Amish from Keogh, SEP or Simple IRA retirement plans.
But that world of long forgotten skills is not as out-of-the-way as it seems. Apart from selling farm products outside their communities, Amish manufactured gazebos, quilts, preserves, furniture, calendars, dolls, candles, photographs, paintings, wood crafted toys, plates and birdfeeders can be sought and bought through the Internet. And in the era of fondness for Rousseauniam simplicity and organic food and reluctance toward chemicals and genetic manipulation, Amish products sell well. Companies like Amish Shopping Mall, Americas Amish Country Publications, Amish Pleasures or Central Market Inc., although not necessarily run by Amish directly, have put these remote people on the map of globalization.
According to Silvano Wueschner, of William Penn University, some Amish members have tried to broaden their economic activities in a contradictory effort to maintain their religious based community. By doing so the Amish have managed to push their communal strictures to the limit.
The Amish eschew the modern ways of the world, on the surface at least -- he says in a recent paper -- but it is readily apparent that the long held perception of a cloistered life is a myth. The Amish frequent many of the same retail stores as their "other world neighbors," they avail themselves of modern means of transportation to travel great distances to visit relatives or to attend funerals and weddings, and in the winter some, especially the elderly, spend the harsher months in Florida as do their "English" counterparts. Within Amish communities there are signs of conflicts that have less to do with theological questions but more with efforts to cling to old customs. As the paper points up, the Amish are wedded to an impossible exegesis given the modernizing influences of the surrounding world.
