From horse power to horsepower, agriculture has gone through a variety of changes since the beginning of Seward County.
In the early days of homsteaders, horses were used for transportation and farming. Families gathered together to harvest and then to thresh grain, all by hand.
As technology advanced, time spent at work in the fields decreased. Mechanical binders cut the time needed to shock grain. Steam-operated threshing machines took the place of horse-powered threshers.
The first mechanical tractors appeared in the 1920s. Some early tractors can be seen at the Seward County Historical Society Museum in Goehner.
Early tractors sported metal wheels, with rubber wheels not coming on scene until the 1930s. Hydraulics become more common in the 1930s and 1940s, as well, with diesel machinery entering the fray in the 1950s.
The types of crops harvested in the county has also changed with time. Grains like wheat are not on the list today. According to the 2017 Centus of Agriculture, Seward County has 145,119 acres devoted to corn for grain and 123,945 for soybeans. Hay/haylage for forage, sorghum and corn for silage round out the top five crops.
Hybrid seeds through companies like Bayer and Syngenta have become more common in recent years.
In addition to crops, early settlers raised both beef and dairy cattle, mainly for their own use. Dairy cattle had to be milked twice a day, by hand, which meant larger herds were too labor intensive for one person or a family.
The invention of the milking machine in the 1930s allowed producers to expand their herds and shortened the time required for the twice-daily milking.
Today, Seward is the future home of DARI Processing, a company that will produce milk that can last for months without refrigeration.
Seward County has also become home to chicken farms, raising thousands of chickens for processing plants.
The census found 43,492 cows and calves in the county as of Dec. 31, 2017. Hogs and pigs were next at 16,218, with laying hens and sheep/lambs each topping 1,000.
As technology has advanced, the number of farms has shrunk while their sizes have grown. In 1900, the county saw 2,285 farms averaging 246 acres each. In 2017, the county had 944 farms, averaging 385 acres each.
