FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OF CHESTER COUNTY, PA. 17 
CROPS. 
The type of cropping system which is most general in Chester 
County consists of a rotation beginning with corn the first year. 
The second year is usually divided between corn and potatoes or 
oats and potatoes or corn and oats or corn, potatoes, and oats. Wheat 
occupies the third year, and is followed by grass, usually timothy 
and clover, which is.ordinarily cut for hay for two years before the 
sod is broken up for corn, though local practice differs considerably 
as to the number of years the grass is left down. There are, of 
course, numerous modifications of this general scheme. These will 
be discussed later. The actual acreage of each of the more important 
crops on the 378 farms operated by their owners is shown graphically 
-in figure 5. The same data are shown in percentages in Table III. 
Hay is seen to occupy twice the area of corn, its closest competitor. 
Wheat is third, occupying 18.2 per cent of the total-crop area: oats 
WUNDREDS OF ACRES 
32 40 48 56 
CORN 
WHEAT 
OATS 
POTATOES 
FRUIT 
TRUCK 
Fig. 5.—Acres of the more important crops on 378 Chester County (Pa.) farms operated by 
their owners. 
are fourth, with 6.4 per cent, and potatoes are fifth, with 6 per cent. 
Fruit is grown on 2.5 per cent of the cropped land. In this survey 
no account was taken of kitchen gardens. These probably occupied 
about one-third as much land as the orchards. The farmers of this 
region grow garden vegetables very generally in suflicient quantity 
for home use. The truck-crop acreage given in Table III repre- 
sents commercial truck crops, which are seen to be of relatively 
small importance in this area. 
That the area included in this survey is fairly representative of 
Chester County as a whole is shown by the census data for the 
entire county given in the third column of Table III. Potatoes and 
hay are a little more important in this area than in the county as a 
whole, while oats are somewhat less important. Commercial truck 
crops, special crops, especially tobacco, and miscellaneous crops occur 
somewhat more frequently in other parts of the county than they do 
in the locality of the survey. 
14188°—Bull. 341—16——2 
