The mint trade's course after Mishawaka: the center moves, then the country

1929 – 2014

The district's trade, followed out: The peppermint record does not stop in 1906, and this entry follows the trade the Mishawaka district sold into, at the strength of the federal and scholarly record — with the district's own share stated only where a source states it. The United States Department of Agriculture's Farmers' Bulletin on peppermint and spearmint as farm crops (February 1929) places the industry's center exactly where the 1906 report left it: mint culture "centralized in Indiana, Michigan, western Oregon and Washington," the Michigan and Indiana muck lands the specialized heart of it, the Pacific Northwest then supplying about 15 percent of the country's mint oils. A Purdue paper in the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science about 1950 names the state's production centers of its day — Bremen, Nappanee, Columbia City, North Judson, Rensselaer, and South Bend — the county seat standing for the district that included Mishawaka's fields, and records of peppermint oil generally that "there is also a limited quantity exported," the export trade by then a remnant beside the domestic confectionery, gum and dentifrice demand the paper lists. The contraction is dated by the county frame the Farms & Crops section prints: St. Joseph County mint acreage halved between 1949 and 1954, from 4,460 acres on 108 farms to 2,207 on 54, and the USDA and Purdue bulletin Mint Farming (revised February 1963) gives the mechanism and the state frame — the Michigan and Indiana region "was the center of mint production until about 1940," when Verticillium wilt began cutting the Michigan acreage and then Indiana's; Indiana still averaged 9,650 peppermint acres in 1950–59, at 31 pounds of oil an acre, and planted 5,200 in 1961. The center's new home is the Washington State University mint history's figure: by 2014 the Pacific Northwest — Idaho, Oregon and Washington — accounted for 84 percent of United States peppermint production. And the last turn is the world's: the Associated Press reported in 2010 that the American share of the world mint-oil market had fallen from about 70 percent to about 40 percent since the mid-1990s, as India, and behind it China and South American producers, expanded — the export trade the Mishawaka district once supplied from the buying side as much as the selling. What this course means for the district itself is stated plainly: no source consulted separates the Mishawaka district's production or sales after the 1954 county frame, and the district's own end — the last still, the last mint harvest on the township's muck — stands in the Farms & Crops section as a named gap, with the census volumes and the Enterprise's film as its settling sources. The trade it fed is documented whole; the district's share of the trade's long decline is not, and is not estimated here.

Sources:

1. Arthur F. Sievers, Peppermint and Spearmint as Farm Crops, U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1555 (February 1929) — the industry centralized in Indiana, Michigan, western Oregon and Washington; about 15 percent of production then from the Pacific Northwest; the Michigan–Indiana muck lands the specialized center.
2. Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science (Purdue peppermint paper, c. 1950) — Indiana production centers named as Bremen, Nappanee, Columbia City, North Judson, Rensselaer and South Bend; peppermint oil used extensively in confections, chewing gum and dentifrices, "also a limited quantity exported."
3. Ralph J. Green Jr., Mint Farming, USDA Agricultural Research Service / Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin No. 212 (revised February 1963) — the Michigan–Indiana region the center of production until about 1940; Verticillium wilt's course; Indiana peppermint acreage averaging 9,650 (1950–59) at 31 pounds an acre, 5,200 acres in 1961.
4. Washington State University, Mint Genomics Resource, "Brief History of the Mint Industry in the United States" — the Pacific Northwest at 84 percent of United States peppermint production by 2014; the industry's migration driven by Verticillium wilt.
5. Associated Press, "Foreign Competition Hurts U.S. Mint Production" (14 June 2010) — the United States' share of the world mint-oil market fallen from about 70 percent to about 40 percent since the mid-1990s on USDA figures; Indiana by then fourth among the states.
6. This build's Farms & Crops section — the St. Joseph County mint frame: 108 farms and 4,460 acres in 1949 against 54 farms and 2,207 acres in 1954 (Census of Agriculture).