Amish - Way of Life

Everything begins with economics, but more specifically or perhaps more importantly, everything begins with the way people get food. All societies, including the Amish, need to find a way to produce food quickly and then find a way to get it to the people. The easier the process of obtaining food is, the more likely a community, like the Amish, will have larger families that interact with other families in the community. Out of the 5 ways to produce food, the Amish uses a combination of horticulture, which is gardening with very simple tools, and pastoralism, which is raising and herding animals for meat and dairy products. Each of these techniques has a carrying capacity. A carrying capacity is a limit on how much you can produce which results in how many you can feed; this can be controlled through the sharing of products within a community. When talking about horticulture and pastoralism, the carrying capacity is quite large; it is based on the environment, like soil type and the amount of rain, and the technology that is available to you. The Amish's way of producing food for their families, allows them to have large families with lots of children. Within the Amish family and community, they can afford to have large families and to stay in one place, because every age group and all males and females have their own job in order to contribute to their survival. In other words, in order to eat, you have to work.