The county in numbers: the census frame

1870 — 2022

The benchmarks, as each count states them: Allen County's farm record can be read off its censuses at four points, and the shape of the whole story is in the spread between them. The official reports quoted in the county history of 1880 counted 4,916 farms in Allen County in 1870, when the county's wheat crop alone ran to 432,752 bushels and its farms churned 543,322 pounds of butter. The census of 1900, as the U.S. Bureau of Soils' survey of the county reprinted it, put the land in farms at 397,235 acres — of the county's 426,880 acres in total, a landscape that was over nine-tenths farmed — with an average farm of 90 acres; the value of farm land and improvements, buildings excluded, stood at $14,565,350, and of farm buildings at $4,707,320. About sixty percent of the farms were worked by their owners; the rest were let, most commonly on shares at two-fifths of the product. A century later the count reads the other way. An Indiana farmland study put the farm share of Allen County's land at 65 percent in 1997. The Census of Agriculture's county profile for 2017 counted 1,548 farms on 281,635 acres, an average of 182 acres. The profile for 2022 counted 1,497 farms on 329,722 acres, an average of 220 acres, with a market value of agricultural products sold of $310,503,000 — crops taking 82 percent of that value and livestock, poultry, and their products 18 percent. The two most recent censuses count land in farms differently enough that the acreage appears to rise between them; the figures are printed here as each census states them. What does not change between the counts is the direction of the farms themselves: fewer, larger, and — in the value of what they sell — more productive than the farm county of 1870 ever was.

Sources:

1. History of Allen County, Indiana (Kingman Brothers, 1880), chapter VI, "Agricultural Society" — the official reports of 1870 (4,916 farms; 432,752 bushels of wheat; 543,322 pounds of butter) as quoted there.
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils, Soil Survey of Allen County, Indiana (field operations of 1908; issued February 7, 1910) — the 1900 census figures (397,235 acres in farms; 90-acre average; values; tenure and share terms) and the county's total area of 426,880 acres.
3. Indiana farmland study as compiled by the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (ACGSI), "Agriculture in Allen County, Indiana" — 65 percent of county land in farm uses in 1997.
4. USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2017 Census of Agriculture County Profile: Allen County, Indiana — 1,548 farms, 281,635 acres, 182-acre average (as summarized by ACGSI).
5. USDA, NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture County Profile: Allen County, Indiana — 1,497 farms, 329,722 acres, 220-acre average, $310,503,000 in products sold, crops 82 percent and livestock 18 percent of sales value.