Business Opportunities Weblog

Amish Flock From Farms To Small Bizs

By on January 12, 2009 in Ideas


The New York Times:

The Amish, the religious sect that has determinedly kept the modern world at bay, have been leaving a quiet life of farming for jobs in small businesses — all the while trying to balance their own values with the culture of the marketplace.

“Their whole intent is to not be caught up in the hustle and bustle of the modern world,” said John Swaffer, advertising manager at the Keim Lumber Company, a lumber mill in Charm, Ohio.

The Amish move into the world of commerce has been more out of necessity than desire. Over the last 16 years, the Amish population in the United States — mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana — has nearly doubled, to 230,000, and the decreasing availability and increasing cost of farmland has forced many of these agrarian families, especially the younger generation, to gravitate to small business as their main source of income.

The businesses, which favor such Amish skills as furniture-making, quilting, construction work and cooking, have been remarkably successful. Despite a lack of even a high school education (the Amish leave school after the eighth grade), hundreds of Amish entrepreneurs have built profitable businesses based on the Amish values of high quality, integrity and hard work. A 2004 Goshen College study reported that the failure rate of Amish businesses is less than 5 percent, compared with a national small-business default rate that is far higher.

Photo by merlin1075.

change farming small biz

Rich Whittle has added 6,226 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • Jaclyn

    The Amish for along time has been in the commerce world. a good 90 percent of the population in northern gladwin michigan by where my parents live, has had Amish working in some sort of public commerce for year’s and years. They have all kind’s of mill’s up there that they work in, store’s that sell amish good’s and they do most of the building around Gladwin.

  • http://www.seattlelogogogue.wordpress.com Rachael

    Has there been any indication that decreasing property values are allowing Amish to again buy up farmland?

  • http://www.homepartyplansuccesstips.com Party Plan Pat

    Even the Amish are embracing change! I love it. They are a great group of people who I feel know when to make a move. Bottom line if they are embracing technology and looking to the future and not going the JOB route…then one must wonder what is it they know about being your own boss that many of us have missed while we have been so inundated with information and technology?

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