TRUCK-GROWING OR TRUCK FARMING 3 



I 



especially true of marketing in the smaller and medium-sized 

 cities. 



The growing of one or a few special crops is usually practiced 

 only where the conditions are especially adapted to the production 

 of the crop or crops in question. The favorable conditions may 

 be those of soil, climate, shipping facilities, availability of labor 

 or accessibility of fertilizer, or a combination of two or more of 

 these factors. Labor and manure can be secured most abundantl}^ 

 in close proximity to large cities. It is therefore not surprising 

 to find special crops, requiring heavy manuring and demanding 

 a large amount of cheap hand labor, grown on a large scale in the 

 vicinity of large cities, where at certain seasons women and children 

 are transported by the trainload from the city to the fields in the 

 morning and back to the city at night. Onion sets constitute a 

 crop of this character and are very extensively grown near Chicago 

 and certain other large cities. 



TRUCK-GROWING OR TRUCK FARMING* 



When vegetables are grown at so great a distance from market 

 that railway or water transportation is required for reaching the 

 market, the industry is commonly referred to as ''truck-growing," 

 ''truck farming," or "trucking." It is usually carried on where 

 land is low priced as compared with that on which vegetables are 

 grown within driving distance of the large city markets. Less 

 intensive methods of culture are practiced and a smaller assort- 

 ment of vegetables is grown, but the acreage devoted to a single 

 crop by an individual grower is usually larger in truck-growing 

 than in market-gardening. Often only one or two truck crops 

 are grown in a given locality, and these may constitute the "money 

 crops" in a system of mixed farming, or in exceptional cases large 

 areas may be devoted to a single crop by a person who gives his 

 whole attention to that one crop. The latter condition obtains 

 only in regions especially adapted to the particular crop in question. 



The extension of vegetable growing to a distance from market 

 has been brought about by the enormous increase in land values 

 near cities, occasioned by the growth of the cities and the demand 

 for products earlier in the season than they could be produced 

 under outdoor conditions in the immediate vicinity of the market. 



* Extract from the author's article on ''Truck-Growing" in Cyclopedia 

 of American Agriculture, Vol. ii, pp. 653-656. Printed by permission of the 

 MacMillan Co., Publishers, New York. 



