The Amish and Organic Farming

One modern invention accepted by Pennsylvania Amish farmers is pesticides: They use horses to pull pesticide dispensers. This may play a part in an increase in birth defects in their community, which are usually explained by inbreeding. (However, large increases over short periods of time are almost always due to environmental changes.) A few years ago, Sally Fallon, head of the Weston A. Price Foundation, was part of a group visiting an Amish farm that had recently become organic (i.e., stop using pesticides). Someone asked the farmer why he had decided to change. Show them, he told his son, who had been standing with his arms behind his back. One of his arms had no forearm. We took that as a sign from God, said the farmer.