Field Crops Usual Planting and Harvesting Dates - Released October 29, 2010, by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Agricultural Statistics Board, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

You have downloaded "comma-separated value" (CSV) files which contain delimited-record representations of the tables in the report referenced above. These CSV files can be imported into spreadsheets, or can be processed easily by other types of software.

The file fcda_index.htm is among the files you have downloaded. It contains table descriptions and file names for the CSV files.

Each line in a given CSV file represents one line in the published table (exception: there is a separate line for each footnote, regardless of how the footnotes are presented in the published table).

The first two values on the line are not part of the table. The first value is a table number. The second value is a line "type", as follows:

t = title line
h = column heading line
u = units definition line
d = data line
c = the horizontal "closing" line (___) at the bottom of the table
f = footnote

Examples:

  Title Line
  195,"t","Crop Summary: Area Planted and Harvested, United States, 2000-2001"

  Column Heading Lines
  195,"h","","Area Planted","Area Planted","Area Harvested","Area Harvested"
  195,"h","Crop","","","",""
  195,"h","","2000","2001","2000","2001"
  195,"h","","","","",""

  Units Definition Line
  195,"u","","1,000 Acres","1,000 Acres","1,000 Acres","1,000 Acres"

  Data Lines
  195,"d","","","","",""
  195,"d","Grains & Hay","","","",""
  195,"d"," Corn for Grain 2/","79545.0","","72732.0",""

  Closing Line
  195,"c",""

  Footnote
  195,"f","2/ Area planted for all purposes."