The curve, part two: 1978–2022 — fewer farms, more tractor to the farm

1978 – 2022, by census

The counts, with their years: The later censuses count wheel tractors on a consolidating farm base. In 1982 — with the census's own comparative column for 1978 beside it — Allen County reported wheel tractors on 1,507 farms, 3,964 machines, against 1,607 farms and 3,930 machines in 1978 (sample-based figures, as the table states). In 2012: 1,083 farms and 2,644 tractors. In 2017: 916 farms and 2,391 tractors. In 2022: 946 farms and 2,803 tractors. The totals never again reached the 4,670 of 1954, because the farms themselves were going: the county counted an estimated 3,230 farms in 1954, 2,756 in 1959, and 1,497 in 2022, on 329,722 acres of land in farms.

The shape of the change: Read as machines per farm reporting tractors, the curve reverses. In 1940 the county's 2,034 tractors stood on 1,924 reporting farms — 1.06 machines to the farm, the one-tractor farm as the rule. By 1954 the figure was 1.81; by 2022 it was 2.96 — 2,803 tractors on 946 farms. The tractor did not leave Allen County after 1954; it concentrated, on fewer and larger operations, in bigger machines — the same consolidation the Farms section records in acreage and farm counts, stated here in the machine's own numbers.

The horse, at the end of the count: The modern census no longer asks after work stock, because there is effectively none to ask after. What it counts is inventory: on 31 December 2022, Allen County farms held 3,737 horses and ponies — the horse persisting in the county in numbers comparable to its tractor fleet, as pleasure, boarding, and show stock rather than as power. The displacement the 1954 work-power classes caught mid-passage stands complete in the record: the horse remains, the work is the tractor's.

Sources:

1. 1982 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Geographic Area Series, Indiana — County Data Table 8, "Machinery and Equipment on Place: 1982 and 1978": Allen County wheel tractors, farms and number, both years.
2. 2017 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Chapter 2, County Level Data, Indiana — Table 39, "Machinery and Equipment on Operation: 2017 and 2012": Allen County tractors, farms and number, both years.
3. 2022 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Chapter 2, County Level Data, Indiana — Table 39, "Machinery and Equipment on Operation: 2022 and 2017": Allen County tractors, farms and number, both years.
4. 2022 Census of Agriculture, Allen County Profile — 1,497 farms, 329,722 acres of land in farms, and 3,737 horses and ponies in inventory, 31 December 2022; the county's farm count of 2,756 in 1959 from the 1959 census, Volume I, Indiana County Table 2.