Drought stress is one of the most significant limiting factors in crop production worldwide, and alfalfa is no exception. Dealing with droughts and water shortages can be challenging. However, there are some new tools available to alfalfa producers to help mitigate yield and profit losses.

The good news is that despite the downsizing of proprietary and public alfalfa breeding programs, there is still a lot of genetic improvements being made. This is in part due to the technical advances in plant breeding.

When a producer plants an alfalfa field, there is an expectation that the field will remain productive for several years. Alfalfa is a perennial crop but there is a limit to its longevity, since all alfalfa fields naturally thin over time.

In recent years, the percentage of alfalfa used in dairy rations has been slowly declining as other feedstuffs have become more available or cheaper. However, alfalfa’s recent significant forage quality improvements may help to reverse that trend.

Which of these five mistakes for fall planting alfalfa have you made?

Salinity is a growing problem on farmland in many parts of the western U.S., ranging from the Dakotas to the arid Southwest. The increase in salinity in these regions is adversely affecting crop productivity and in some cases making portions of fields unprofitable or unfarmable.