July 30, 2019
July 2, 2019 • Hay acres in the U.S. are projected to be down only slightly in 2019 compared to last year, according to USDA’s Acreage report that was released last week. The decline totale...


July 9, 2019
If you grow alfalfa, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Aphanomyces root rot. It’s a disease that has dogged me my entire working career and it can take out a new seeding field in fairly shor...


June 25, 2019
June 4, 2019 • Alfalfa will be included in the next round of government facilitation payments being used to somewhat offset losses incurred by trade war tariffs. At this time, it’s unknown...


June 25, 2019
The record rainfall that has impacted a wide swath of the U.S. this spring and early summer has resulted in a large number of prevented planted acres. Many grain farmers, and no doubt some dairy and b...


June 18, 2019
If ever there was a year that prompted the strong desire to disregard alfalfa autotoxicity and write it off as a bad dream, this is it. The problem: It’s not a bad dream. This spring has provided...


June 11, 2019
It was nearly 10 years ago when I attended an agronomy field day in Arlington, Wis., and heard John Grabber speak about some initial research he was doing that entailed establishing alfalfa under sila...


June 4, 2019
Remember dust? That’s the stuff that develops when soils are dry. It has been missing in action this spring across a good chunk of the U.S. Last week, I had the chance to travel across several Mid...


May 28, 2019
A week ago, I emailed the manager at our company’s Hoard’s Dairyman Farm and asked him if they had contemplated cutting alfalfa yet.His response: “We’re going to cut some today, before the rai...


May 22, 2019
Working closely with growers the past 10 years, I too often recognized that high-quality forage didn’t materialize with a traditional harvest approach...


May 22, 2019
Alfalfa is an important livestock feed, especially for dairy production and horses. Genetically-modified (GMO) resistance to glyphosate herbicide became available to farmers in 2011...