Crops boasted about over time in America (8)

'time in america' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I can't judge whether this works.

'crops boasted about over' is the wordplay.
'crops' becomes 'uts' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'boasted' becomes 'crew' ('crew' is past tense of 'crow', meaning to boast).
'about' becomes 'c' (abbreviation for circa).
'over' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (in a down clue, some letters go over others).
'crew'+'c'='crewc'
'uts' after 'crewc' is 'CREWCUTS'.

Can you help me to learn more?