Mennonite Families Leave Southern Ontario, Canada, as Urban Growth Squeezes Farmland

Aaron Bowman, a member of a Mennonite community that keeps ancient church traditions and is known as the Christian Mennonites, lives in one of the world’s most advanced countries, Canada. His family has farmed the rural southern Ontario region for generations, but he says they no longer see a future there as the nearby city of Waterloo expands into the countryside. According to a report by the British newspaper The Guardian, the growth is encroaching on their traditional homes and farms.

Bowman works as an accountant for his church as well as in agriculture. In a rare interview with a journalist, he said: “There is no land here for love or money. We need new communities if we are to continue raising our families on the farm.”

Bowman’s brother is expected to move his family later in 2018 to Prince Edward Island, on the east coast, away from the encroaching city. Another younger brother is expected to join him later. The article says dozens of other families from Bowman’s church are also scattering. Bowman does not feel happy about leaving, but he understands why they are doing so.

The article reports that Mennonite and Amish communities are moving from Ontario to Prince Edward Island because of large farms, suburban sprawl and high land prices. It describes Prince Edward Island as Canada’s smallest province, where land is cheaper and where the province accepts the community’s wish to live apart from mainstream Canadian society. The article says this includes rejecting government-run secular schools, voting, holding driver’s licences and paying insurance.

The article states that the community has its roots in the Netherlands and Germany and belongs to the Protestant tradition. It estimates the movement at about 2 million people worldwide, many of whom live a fully modern life and do not look different from their neighbours. Mennonites believe that love and peace are at the heart of what it means to be a Christian, the article says, but they do not all agree on how best to live out that faith, a life of peace that echoes the blessing on peacemakers (Matthew 5:9).

The article explains that from the nineteenth century some North American Mennonites chose not to adopt new technologies, believing these inventions would erode humility and simple living, while more progressive Mennonites have embraced many mainstream changes. Traditional Mennonites keep many older customs and are selective about the technology they accept. In Mexico, the article says, traditional Mennonites often use horses and horse-drawn carts, while in Canada they generally use small cars or trucks. The Amish, the article notes, are a splinter group of the Mennonites with a strong resemblance to them but are considered separate communities. The article says Mennonites are generally more lenient than the Amish in applying social avoidance and in using technology such as cars and farm tractors.

The article also reports that Ontario has lost 20 percent of its agricultural land over the past 40 years, much of it to urban growth, new housing and industries such as rock and gravel extraction. Catherine Enders, Executive Director of the Ontario Farmland Trust, said: “We lose a lot of agricultural land for non-agricultural uses, and this does not really help the sustainability of land.”

Source: Read the original report (translated from Arabic)