© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

New Amish Settlement Competes for Land in Delaware County

Clay Masters
/
IPR

A new Amish settlement has sprung up in Delaware County, Iowa near Delhi. Members of the Amish community near Edgewood left the settlement because of economic differences they had with the Bishop  about how much time they could work off the farm. In the capital intensive agriculture industry it’s hard for anyone to work the land without a second income. As the Amish are forced to become more progressive it’s pitting them against the eroding Midsize American farms.

A long line of 18-wheelers idle at a big ethanol plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Scott Cole, who’s in his 20s, hops into the cab of his truck after checking in at the plant. He farms 600 acres of corn and soybeans with his dad in Delaware County, Iowa. He admits, without the land in his family, he’d have a hard time being a farmer these days.

“It’d be about impossible, I hate to say it,” Cole said.

That’s because agriculture land values in Iowa are skyrocketing. Last year it jumped 32% in one year. It continues to rise, just at a slower pace. That makes it tough for small and mid-sized farmers to expand. Cole says his family farm is small compared to other farms in the area that have upwards of 20,000 acres. Now, a group of Amish have moved into Delaware County and Cole says they’re great neighbors; but a new form of competitor.

“Those guys have more of an alliance together so they can put their money together to buy ground,” Cole said. “Whereas a lot of us nowadays are individual farmers where it’s tough for one person to put money together to buy ground.”

The Amish have become more progressive just to compete in the marketplace. Donald Kraybill researches Amish life at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania says some Amish may use tractors or hire someone to drive them for construction work.

This group of 20 Amish families moved here because of a Bishop’s rule at their former settlement that men can only work two days a week off the farm. One of them is John Henry Yoder. In addition to organic oats, corn and alfalfa, Yoder sells organic eggs and goat’s milk. To make ends meet, two of his 15 kids have a thriving construction business. Yoder says putting limits on what they can do for work just wasn’t feasible.

“The idea behind it was so that more of the Amish, more of the folks stay on the farm,” Yoder said. “That was a good idea. I think that’s the place to raise your family. But as time goes on things change and not everybody sees it in that perspective.”

To keep his family on the farm, he’d have to get bigger, and with the way he farms, he says he can’t afford to pay the 6 to 8 thousand dollars it costs for an acre of land out here.

Kraybill says in the middle of the 20th century more than 90% of Amish households relied on agriculture for their primary income. But come the turn of the century, Kraybill said there were just too many babies and too few acres.

“It would cost typically two million dollars for an Amish couple to set up a farming operation with 50 to 60 acres,” Kraybill said. “So all of those pressures pushed the Amish towards other occupational ventures.”

“The problems of the Amish are the problems of beginning farmers are the problems of medium sized farmers,” said Iowa State Agriculture Economist Mike Duffy.

While Duffy doesn’t think we’ll see a farmland bubble burst, he says land values will slow down more like a tire that’s hit a nail. As for Amish farmer John Henry Yoder, he says he wants to expand his farm… but he’s got bigger problems.

“I think I should do, just having some family time, with high cost of living and a family to support sometimes we get a little sidetracked by thinking we got to keep working and working,” Yoder said.

Clay Masters is the senior politics reporter for MPR News.