The county farm series — the published volumes

U.S. Census of Agriculture, published volumes (1982–2022 points as stated); 2002 County Comprehensive Plan, App. A, Table 3-2

St. Joseph County's farm count has halved in forty years while its farmed acreage, after one sharp fall, has held. The volume-verified points print first. In 2022 the county held 547 farms on 153,034 acres of land in farms, an average of 280 acres — 52.2 percent of the county's 293,045 acres — with harvested cropland on 428 farms and irrigation on 82. In 2017: 629 farms, 149,981 acres, average 238. In 2012: 691 farms, 151,975 acres, average 220. The earlier points ride the county's own 2002 comprehensive plan, at its rounded strength: land in farms of 172,500 acres in 1982, 174,226 in 1987, 172,348 in 1992, then 154,142 in 1997 — more than 18,000 acres lost in five years — against farm counts the plan rounds to 1,000, 900, 780 and 680. The series' shape is the synthesis the record supports: acreage roughly level through the 1980s, a steep conversion drop in the 1990s as the northern townships suburbanised, then a plateau near 150,000 acres while the farm count kept falling (691 to 629 to 547) and the average farm grew (220 to 238 to 280 acres) — conversion and consolidation working together. Two cautions print with the table. A widely-carried secondary figure for 2012 land in farms (165,861 acres, in a state food-hubs study) contradicts the volume's 151,975 and its own companion table; the volume controls, and the conflict stands in the register (C35). And the early census points — 1925 through 1978 — were not volume-verified and stand as a named gap, not as blanks filled from memory.