Desired Effects

Everything we as Americans have is a result of our cravings for efficiency. Nobody, and I mean niguno, is exempt from it's tentacles. While some of us hate the very word, we still benefit from it's effects.
Even the most separte people of our nation freely enjoy the result of the industrial revolution and beyond. Whereas the Amish are not allowed to own most modern equipment, they can use small gas engines to power tedders, discbines, balers etc. All these implements are horse drawn but gas powered.
So where does that leave the average 'english' farmer? Right in the clutches of modernity. Producing (usually) a single commodity on a large scale (not necessarily mega-farms) as efficiently as possible. Which in order to survive, they must play by certain rules. These rules are usually unspoken, but widely known. The most important dictate, however, is produce efficiently.
Example:
Let's talk about milking parlor efficiency. There is more jargon created to describe parlor efficiency than you can shake a stick at. Cows/hr, cows/man hr, turns/hr, pounds of milk/man hr, prep time, prep lag time, and my favorite, fall-offs/hr.
All these numbers are indecies trying to make concrete out of abstract events. Of course these numbers all have an end. And that end is to make management decisions. Hire/fire Joe Blow, cull/treat cow#1234, implement automation etc. This is where my point starts to develop (in case you wondered where I was going with this). In order for efficiency to be maximized, little by little inputs must be purchased. For example, in order to milk 100 cows/hr in a double 8 parlor automation is explicitly required. Automatic take-offs, rapid exit, crowd gates, plate cooler, large claws, two recievers, and the list continues. None of these technologies can easily be produced on farm. Farms today are entirely too dependant on outside inputs, and they have been silently coerced in order to produce efficiently. Mind you though, there was never a time when farms were self sustaining islands. Farms always were and always will be needful of inputs; the quantity of inputs per output is my scruffle. Notice now I'm not eliminating efficiency entirely (the previous sentence includes a measure of efficiency), to do so would be an impossibility.
Take now for instance a farm that produces many products. Wool, milk, meat, apples, corn etc. There always needs to be a larger production of a 'safe' product to fall back on in hard times, but diversity nonetheless. Farms back in the hill country are closest to this paradigm. They burn wood, make maple syrup, sell timber, own a sawmill, and do much of the work themselves. BUT, they still need rubber tires, gasoline, diesel, oil, machinery, wire fencing, etc.

Back to our amish friends:
They still have a heads up on most of us because of two things. Food and electricity.
A co-worker of mine canned 50 jars of tomatoes, 60 jars of pickles, and that again of applesauce. I dare say canning food has become an incovienince. And thinking in terms of modern efficiency, it's uneconomical to preserve food you've grown. Our economy is driven by purchasing inputs. Our farms especially should be net providers, not break-even.

Electricity is the epitome of purchased inputs. We all would be helpless without it. I think we'd give up gasoline before the the mighty electron. Heck, electricity was harnessed before internal combustion. True, the Amish use generators and propane appliances but they're still MORE self sufficient than any of us.
I'm not endorsing a retreatism that's more than popular in the ag community. I'm only attempting to pursuade individuals to consider their dependancy on inputs. There must needs be a compromise. To become Amish really isn't a solution, they're just dependant on us. The farm as a net production center with limited inputs, is closer to sustainability.

Here's an ole' time example. In the olden days pork lard was used like we use crisco. A tub was kept next to the wood oven. In order to retrieve a desired amount, the cook would use a pig's tail as a spatula. Now a days, we'd just buy a plastic spatula.