The corn-and-livestock order

1949 — 2022

Corn fed to animals on the place, then corn and beans sold off it: The county the 1954 census counted in full was a corn-and-livestock county of the classic northern-Indiana kind. Corn for all purposes stood on 60,563 acres in 1954 (52,176 in 1949), on 1,592 farms; harvested for grain it made 57,835 acres and 3,610,820 bushels, of which 1,088 farms sold 2,150,103 bushels — the rest walked off the farm as pork, beef, and milk. Another 2,215 acres went to silage, 24,440 tons of it. Hay was cut from 22,002 acres — alfalfa and its mixtures on 9,168 acres making 21,024 tons, clover and timothy on 11,033 acres making 16,977. Oats, the horse-feed crop, was already shrinking inside the count, 20,568 acres in 1949 to 15,286 in 1954, and the soybean had arrived: 13,693 acres grown for all purposes in 1954 against 7,993 in 1949, 13,165 of them harvested for beans for 316,153 bushels. The animals the corn fed: 23,313 cattle and calves on 1,313 farms in the fall of 1954, and 27,920 hogs and pigs on 844 farms. The order's modern form is the same skeleton with the livestock thinned and the beans ascendant: in 2022 the county harvested corn for grain from 71,437 acres and soybeans from 57,228, forage from 4,699, and sold $130,136,000 of crops against $32,108,000 of livestock and their products, out of $162,244,000 in all — grains, oilseeds, dry beans and peas alone accounting for $117,612,000. Hogs, remarkably, held and grew: 34,974 head on hand at the end of 2022, and $19,303,000 of hogs and pigs sold, the largest single livestock line — the corn-and-hog order surviving inside a bean economy. Cattle and calves numbered 4,513.

Sources:

1. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1954 Census of Agriculture, Vol. I, Part 4 (Indiana), County Table 9, Parts 1–2 — corn for all purposes, corn for grain and sold, corn silage, wheat, oats, barley, soybeans, and hay acreage and production for 1954 and 1949, read from the printed tables.
2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1954 Census of Agriculture, Vol. I, Part 4 (Indiana), County Table 7, Part 1 — cattle and calves (1,313 farms; 23,313 head), and hogs and pigs (844 farms; 27,920 head).
3. USDA, NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture County Profile: St. Joseph County, Indiana — corn for grain 71,437 acres; soybeans 57,228; forage 4,699; sales by type; livestock inventories at December 31, 2022.