The Declining Mennonite Farming Community, Biological Insect Control and More Bits & Pieces

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PHOTO: FOTOLIA/
The boll weevil may finally have met its biological match, ironically in the form of another infamous pest, the fire ant.

The Declining Mennonite Farming Community

The Mennonite community has a long-standing reputation for producing frugal and successful farmers, but not even the Mennonites have been able to escape the economic problems that beset the American farmer. So, at a special assembly in Mt. Pleasant, Pa., 130 Mennonite farmers formed a national organization to help other farming community members combat the accumulating debts that are driving established growers into bankruptcy and young people away from the farm.

In 1963, 38 percent of the North American male members of the Mennonite church farmed. Only 19 percent of the men farm now, and most of those individuals find themselves in situations similar to those of American farmers at large, who now account for only 30 percent of the American male population. That even such careful husbanders as these should find themselves in trouble underscores the seriousness of the decline in American agriculture.

  • Published on Mar 1, 1985
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