CHAPTER VIII. 



THE CHOIOE AND IMPMOYEMENT OF CROPS. 



There is a large variety of crops grown on the 

 farms of the United States. A very few, however, 

 occupy most of the acreage. What is popularly 

 called the grass crop — including many varieties of 

 grasses and the clovers — grown for pasturage and 

 hay, occupies the largest area and has the greatest 

 value. Next to this come the three great cereals, corn, 

 wheat and oats. The acreage in corn is about twice 

 that in wheat and three times that in oats. Cotton 

 comes next in acreage. Large as is the acreage in 

 some other crops there is none which makes any 

 considerable percentage of the total cultivated area. 

 A million of acres is a very large tract of land, but it 

 is insignificant when compared with the hundreds of 

 millions of acres in the farms of the country. 



There has been rapid increase in the cultivated 

 acreage of the country and some changes in the pro- 

 portion given to different crops, but there is little 

 reason to believe that the time will soon come when 

 grass, corn, wheat and oats will not be the leading 

 crops of the country, at least so far as extent of acre- 

 age is concerned. 



Almost every crop now grown on the farms of the 

 United States had been grown to some extent before 

 the revolutionary war. Improvements in methods of 

 culture or in machinery for utilizing the crop have 

 brought some crops into greater relative importance. 

 This has been noticeably true of cotton, and it is 



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