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 While Amish farmers traditionally spurn government programs, younger Amish bishops have started to realize that selling development rights is a way to preserve both their land and their culture, according to officials in Lancaster and Chester counties, the heart of Amish country. Pennsylvania leads the nation in farmland preservation, according to the American Farmland Trust. With acres of rolling farmland, Lancaster and Chester counties have some of the most aggressive programs, but have reported a relatively low level of Amish participation in the past.
Bill Gladden, director of Chester County's open space and farmland preservation programs, said Plain Sect farms traditionally have accounted for 5 percent of those preserved.
But participation is on the rise, Gladden said, with that number reaching 20 percent last year and 30 percent this year.
Karen Martynick, executive director of the Lancaster Farmland Trust, said that between 1988 and 2003 fewer than half of the 198 farms preserved by the trust were Amish. But in the next two years, 89 percent of the 72 farms preserved belonged to the Amish.
Henry Beiler, an Amish farmer in Lancaster County, has preached the value of the preservation programs to others since donating development rights to his three farms in 1987.
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 "It took 20 years to become the thing to do," Beiler said. "It's a good feeling for me to see this finally take off."
Many Amish farmers didn't understand how they could receive money for something they couldn't see, he said. Preservation programs typically pay the difference between a farm's value as a farm and its potential value as a development site.
Officials credit the increase in Amish participation to years of patient outreach, as well as an infusion of private money.
"We built a relationship with the Amish," Martynick said. "They are familiar with us, they trust us and they work with us because we are a private organization."
David Shields, associate director of the Brandywine Conservancy's land stewardship program, said groups have been making efforts to connect with Amish farmers.
"The Plain Sect farmers are the backbone of the agricultural community in the western area of the county," he said. "As long as we have farmland, whether Amish or English, people will continue to invest and contribute to the preservation of the area."
[Associated Press]
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