At some point, every pasture or hayfield needs to be renovated. Although there are many useful approaches to improving a piece of land for forage production, some cover crops offer distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Livestock enterprises can use crop acres seeded to cover crops and crop residue to stretch the grazing season and save on feed costs. Crop operations benefit from the nutrient value added through livestock manure and to help with pest management.

There are several benefits to seeding alfalfa-grass mixtures rather than pure alfalfa stands, starting with biodiversity.

Sorghum-sudangrass is a C4 (warm-season) annual. It can easily grow 10 feet tall and yield more than 5 tons of dry matter per acre during the hot summer.

Feed costs comprise 60% to 80% of the typical farm budget. If we can reduce those costs by 20% or even 10%, it will happily lower our break-even price. Read more about some grazing strategies to lessen the need for stored feed.

We may not think about it much, but there’s an interesting story behind how the soybean became a pillar of U.S. agriculture. A long-time staple in eastern parts of the world, soybeans originally came to the states in the early 19th century as ballast in cargo ships that were returning from the Far East.