Winter, spring, summer or fallAll you have to do is callAnd I'll be there, yes, I will.You've got a friendThese lyrics from a 1971 song by Carole King remind us that we all need a friend. The same i

The alfalfa seed industry has gone through a massive makeover in the past 20 years. There are significantly fewer seed marketers, breeding programs, and the number of university testing trials is down

The problem is easy to identify, and so are the plant symptoms. The answers are often less apparent.There’s no need for a magnifying glass to see that large equipment, driving across alfalfa fields

The Midwest dairy farmer’s lament was to the point: “If I didn’t have to worry about winterkill, I’d definitely grow more alfalfa.”This farmer, like many others sitting at

Back in the day, I would constantly correct people when they referred to a “fall seeding” of alfalfa. Fall is simply too late; more correctly, it was, or at least should be in the North, a

It was actually a sulfur study. I was at Joe’s farm to gather some alfalfa tissue and soil samples from one of his fields as part of a statewide assessment on sulfur fertility. What with fewer indus

According to data that was recently released by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), there are roughly 1.8 million dairy cows in California

With tight margins in the dairy industry, we sometimes look to reduce feed costs as a method to improve margins

While alfalfa fields in the South are being cut, some for a second time, those in the North are just waking from winter slumber . . . or at least we hope they are

Herbicide-tolerant crops have been widely adopted across production agriculture. Over 90% of canola, sugar beet, soybean, cotton, and corn crops in the U.S. are herbicide tolerant

There are many methods used by growers to determine when and how much to irrigate forages. Some decide to turn the water on after handling a shovel-full of soil

Whether you are in the business of growing and selling forages or feeding cattle, correctly assigning the economic value of forages can impact profitability

Just like managing dairy cows, there is a lot more to putting water on crops than it looks

What makes alfalfa such an interesting crop to study and try to understand is what also makes it so frustrating.I quit trying to predict alfalfa winterkill years ago

Whether you are in the business of growing and selling forages or feeding cattle, correctly assigning the economic value of forages can impact profitability

Craig Sheaffer has worked with alfalfa his entire academic career. The University of Minnesota researcher can reel off a bevy of advantages that alfalfa adds to a farm’s cropping and feeding systems

It’s here. No, I’m not talking about the traditional holiday season. Rather, I’m referring to the epicenter of the seed-buying season. Let’s face it, late-year seed purchases help

Water does not contribute to your forage economic value when balancing diets or pricing forage. Instead, the water is dried off, and it’s the grams (g) of nutrients and minerals per 100 g of total

If you grow alfalfa, and if you grow corn for silage or grain, not taking advantage of the nitrogen provided by a terminated alfalfa crop is like flipping dollar bills into the toilet.Apparently, this

Alfalfa has been identified as one of the crops that is eligible for government payments to farmers as a result of the retaliatory tariffs imposed by China on agricultural crops — alfalfa hay among