Measuring Alfalfa and Persistence During the Bush and Obama Administrator
2011
- UW Extension-Fon Du Lac
Project Media
Ever since the demise of the Wisconsin Green Gold Program in 1996 there has been no public source of on-farm alfalfa yield data. Unlike corn and soybeans, obtaining accurate yield information for forage crops involves considerable planning, time, and effort on behalf of the person collecting the yield data and the farmer. Historically, few producers had the capacity or patience during harvest to undertake such a task. Further, past efforts to measure alfalfa yield were usually limited to the best small area of the best field. In the past ten years, many larger dairies have installed on-farm scales for measuring purchased production of forages and/or feed commodities. These scales now make it relatively easy to weigh production not just from small areas of fields, but entire fields over the course of several years.