The mechanization curve, II: the long thinning, 1974 – 2022

1974 – 2022

The plateau and the wobbles, printed as published: From 1974 the censuses count wheel tractors (the garden and crawler machines folded into the general stock), and several of the mid-series volumes rest on samples of farms; both facts are carried with the figures, and the figures are printed exactly as published, wobbles and all — the series is a set of enumerations, not a smoothed line. The county's own 1978 census file (its Table 7) gives 1974 directly: 2,253 wheel tractors on 926 farms. The same file's 1978 count, 2,531 wheel tractors on 984 farms, agrees to the machine with the 1982 volume's comparative column — the curve's second internal check. Then: 2,278 wheel tractors on 895 farms in 1982 (the figure identical in the 1982 volume and in the 1987 volume's comparative column); 2,449 on 846 farms in 1987 — above 1982, on a different sample, and printed so; 2,370 wheel tractors on 709 farms in 1992; 1,711 on 602 farms in 1997. The 2002 census's county machinery table was not reached in the record assembled for this section and stands as a named gap in the curve; the 2007 figure returns with the next entry.

The modern fleet: fewer farms, bigger machines: The 2012 volume's Table 40 gives the county 1,825 tractors on 588 farms in 2007 and 1,691 on 555 farms in 2012. The 2022 volume's Table 39 gives 1,569 on 491 farms in 2017 and 1,560 on 436 farms in 2022 — the fleet essentially level for a decade while the farm count slid (547 farms in the county in 2022, on the Farms record), so that the 2022 fleet stands at about three and a half machines for every farm that reports one, against about two and a quarter at the 1959 peak. The composition has inverted the 1954 fleet's: of the 1,560 tractors of 2022, 678 are machines of 100 horsepower or more and only 342 are under 40 horsepower — the garden-tractor class that was this county's own manufacture is now the smallest part of its fleet, and the big row-crop tractor, built in neither South Bend nor anywhere in Indiana in the record reached, is the largest. The curve's whole shape, in one view: 287 machines in 1925; 1,063 in 1940; 2,939 in 1954; the peak, 3,441, in 1959; and a fifty-year thinning to 1,560 in 2022, on a third of the peak's farms, in machines of a size the peak's fleet never approached.

Sources:

1. 1978 Census of Agriculture, county data file for St. Joseph County, Indiana, Table 7 — 1974: 2,253 wheel tractors on 926 farms; 1978: 2,531 on 984 farms (sample basis stated in the volume).
2. 1982 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Geographic Area Series, Part 14 (Indiana), County Table 8 — 1982: 2,278 wheel tractors on 895 farms, its 1978 comparative agreeing with the 1978 county file; 1987 Census of Agriculture, Geographic Area Series, Part 14, County Table 8 — 1987: 2,449 on 846 farms, its 1982 comparative identical to the 1982 volume (sample basis stated).
3. 1997 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Geographic Area Series, Part 14 (Indiana), County Table 9 — 1997: 1,711 wheel tractors on 602 farms; 1992: 2,370 on 709 farms.
4. 2012 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Chapter 2 (Indiana), Table 40 — 2012: 1,691 tractors on 555 farms; 2007: 1,825 on 588 farms.
5. 2022 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Chapter 2 (Indiana), Table 39 — 2022: 1,560 tractors on 436 farms (under 40 hp: 342; 40–99 hp: 540; 100 hp or more: 678); 2017: 1,569 on 491 farms.
6. The 2002 Census of Agriculture's Indiana county machinery table — named here as not reached; the curve prints no interpolated 2002 figure.