A new book, ‘Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability,’ written by Rayden Loewen, Professor Emeritus of the University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, features interviews with 14 Washington and Johnson County Mennonite farmers, most in the Kalona, Wellman and Parnell areas.

At the time the interviews were done in June and July of 2014-15 by John Eicher who was a student at the University of Iowa at the time.

The interviews with area farmers were part of a global project that included interviews with 158 Mennonite farmers from around the world. 

Loewen said the interviews with the area farmers enriched the book and helped to build bridges among Mennonite Farmers.

“The interviews also helped in answering the age-old question how our faith has related to our approach to working the land and to our rural communities, Loewen related.

How did the research show how the area Mennonite farmers compare with the other farms across the world?

“In comparison to the farmers in Indonesia, Bolivia and Zimbabwe, all from the so-called Global South, the Washington County farmers are very well-to-do, have the luxury of strong government support systems, highly sophisticated technology (mechanical, chemical and genetic),” Loewen said. 

“Like Mennonite farmers from around the world, the Washington County farmers typically see faith as crucial in their everyday lives and work at integrating that faith into their farms,” he pointed out.  “Like Mennonites from every part of the globe, they do not, however, all agree on how faith matters; this is apparent in every one of these communities.”  

Loewen said that in Washington County some farmers said that faith directed them to use herbicides because it reduced tillage thus protecting the soil from erosion.  Some farmers, like the Amish, of course, use horse-and-buggies and steel-wheeled tractors and keep farms small just like the Old Colonists in Bolivia.  

Other farmers see organic agriculture as the most faithful approach to farming, working with nature, they say, rather than against it. Many farmers saw their duty to help farmers overseas and had served with NGOs like Mennonite Central Committee, while other farmers preferred to support only evangelical missions with no agronomy programming.

“So faith was hugely important, just not in predictable ways,” he said.  “And of course, it was also different in the Kalona area than say in Siberia where Mennonite farmers were forced to live on communist collectives for 50 years between 1931 and 1981; the meaning of faith in that situation is completely different than on North American farms.”

Loewen added that it’s different again in highly secular Netherlands, in deeply mystical Java, in post-colonial Zimbabwe, or isolated Bolivia.

Loewen also noted that dispite very stark differences, farmers are all the same everywhere. They wake up in the morning and figure out how to coax nature to produce food necessary for human survival; this is why I say that if translators were present farmers from these seven communities could talk to one another all day.

Loewen said he was reminded how Washington County farmer Duane Peterson, married to Janet Yoder, wrote in his diary for April 13, 1991, about a visit to England’s Lake District; dropping in on an English pub one night, he enjoyed a lovely chat with English farmers and discovered that for those farmers “the problems were the same as ours.”

The book was published by Hopkins University Press and in Canada. It is available through Amazon.com in the United States or you could obtain it through Amazon.ca at a lower price.

Copies of the book were mailed to all area farmers who were interviewed. Loewen also plans to send copies to the Iowa Mennonite Museum on the Kalona Historical Villages grounds as soon as the museum opens for the summer season.

At the time Loewen conducted the 10-year research project with interviews with 158 Mennonite farms across the globe he was professor of Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

While he is retired, he continues his affiliation with the university while he and his son Sasha farms his 700-acre certified organic farm east of the Red River near Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. They grow hemp, alfalfa, wheat and oats and has time to enjoy his grandchildren. He also finds time to serve on a few community and church committees.

The area Mennonites who were interviewed for this book were:

Kalona-Delmar and Carolyn Bontrager, Ed & Marge Hershberger, Bob Miller, Perry and Carolyn Miller, David and Martha Miller, Marlin and Mary Miller, Vernon and Inez Yoder,

Parnell – Bruce Hochstetler, Edie Hochstetler, Gilbert and Sandy Gingerich.

Wellman – Terry Erb, Brent Yoder, Gerald Yoder, Calvin Yoder.

Iowa City – Dick and Jane Yoder-Short, Marilyn Preheim.