Agriculture
Agriculture Plan presentation, September 19, 2007 (PDF, 10.8 MB)
Agriculture has a long history in Chester County, and it continues to be vitally important, both to the economy and the culture of the County. Moreover, the resource is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable. Parts of Chester County, Lancaster County and York County form the largest block of prime agricultural land in the world. The market value of agricultural production in Chester County in 2002 was $376,771,000. Crop sales accounted for $288,093,000 of the total value and livestock sales accounted for $88,678,000 of the total value.
Chester County ranks second in Pennsylvania, only after adjacent Lancaster County, for farm production.
Yet, agriculture continues to be threatened. For instance, the 2002 Census of Agriculture reported that there were 1,918 farms in Chester County. This was a 3 percent decline in the number of farms from the previous census in 1997. The 2002 Census also reported that the 1,918 farms occupied 168,165 acres in Chester County, which was a loss of 14 percent of the land area in farming from the previous census. In 2002 the average size of a farm in the County was 88 acres.