Washington and Johnson county farmers are among seven geographically distinctive Mennonite farming communities featured in a book published last fall titled, “Mennonite Farmers: a Global History of Place and Sustainability.”

The book was written by Royden Loewen, a Mennonite farmer himself who is a retired history professor from Winnipeg in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Loewen has written several books regarding rural history and the Mennonite faith, and when he began researching for this book in 2014 then-University of Iowa professor John Eicher convinced him that it was Iowa’s Mennonite farmers he should focus on rather than from Kansas. Loewen made his first-ever trip to Iowa during this time, and Eicher conducted interviews with 14 farmers mostly in the Kalona, Wellman, and Parnell areas. Loewen says Iowa farmers’ rich soil, technological advances, and government support contrast with many of the other farmers who were interviewed in Bolivia, Canada, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, and Zimbabwe. He shares how faith gave varying perspectives on their agriculture practices, “One of the farmers I remembered said faith meant in fact using chemicals on their farm because that was the only way you avoided soil erosion where another would say, ‘I know organic agriculture is an expression of my faith when I’m working with nature and not against it.’ And yet another might say, ‘Keeping the latest technology at bay is my expression of faith.’ And so I think there’s a genuine desire to be stewards of the earth.”

Loewen says he hopes to return to Washington County to meet with some of the farmers from the book that he did not get to meet first hand. You can hear more from him during today’s edition of the KCII Special Edition Agriculture Magazine on air and at kciiradio.com.