I guess you could say I’ve recently been diagnosed with a rare disorder.
I call it Amish Envy.
It hit me after reading the story of Amos Miller and his business, Miller Farm. Miller, who is Amish, is a Pennsylvania food producer whose annual sales sing to the tune of $1.8 million from less than half that in 2006.
And here’s what amazing: He’s grown his company without any of the modern conveniences that we hold so dear.
That’s right: No BlackBerry or iPhone (or basic cell phone, for that matter). No computers. No high-tech, back-end customer management software. No car, no e-mail, no texting.
And yet his farm is so busy that he’s turning down orders. From the article in Business Week:
…data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggest what an anomaly Miller Farm is. While farming is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, with more than 300,000 new farms started from 2002 to 2007, accounting for nearly 2 million small farms, making a good living is becoming tougher. The USDA in its 2007 census said the number of small farms with $100,000 to $250,000 annual sales (its highest revenue range for small farms) declined 7%.
How can anyone grow a business, particularly in this economy, without modern technology? As someone in the technology business who is operating a full-service IT and executive placement company, I do take comfort in the fact that my job would, literally, be impossible without gadgets and gizmos and the arsenal of logistical tools I have at my disposal. And given, Miller is running a farm, the oldest industry on the planet.
But still, modern farms use modern conveniences. Creating a $2 million a year business with little more than a horse-and-buggy and the shirt on your back is impressive.
But Miller has the basics, still all you need to create a sustainable enterprise: Supply and demand. He jumped on a trend that has been popularized in by Americans in recent years: The demand for whole, nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables and meats. He, of course, has the supply.
”It used to be that organic was all the rage,” says Dan Kittredge, executive director of the Real Food Campaign, which is part of advocacy group Re-Mineralize the Earth. “Now everyone has organic.” Nutrient-dense food is the new rage and gives “the advantage back” to small farmers who leverage the notion that certain foods, such as fermented vegetables, grass-fed beef, and pastured chickens, are more nutritious than conventionally produced products and may help consumers strengthen their immune systems. “There is money to be made here,” he says.
Miller earns direct revenues from attending conferences (he rents a truck and hires a non-Amish friend to drive it). His orders come in via snail mail and a landline telephone, as he does make a concession for Alexander Graham Bell’s original. And he ships foods FedEx (you have to give in on a few things…right?).
Miller says he doesn’t get down on working without modern conveniences. In fact, it prevents him from growing too big and perhaps sacrificing quality. He prefers it that way, even.
”The city is a pretty sterile environment,” he says. “But if I did it once a month, I’d get lost, I’d forget what it’s like to get dirty.”
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