Wheel traffic in alfalfa: How much of the fi eld is impacted by machines and what does that mean for yield?
2021
- Department of Agronomy, UW Madison
- Department of Soil Science, UW Madison
- USDA Dairy Forage Research Center
Project Media
Alfalfa is unique from other crops as it requires a variety of machines to
harvest. Whether it is being harvested for silage or hay, alfalfa harvest can require up
to five different pieces of equipment per cutting. With this many machines traveling
through a field during a single harvest, a significant portion of production field can
be affected by machine traffic. Specific machines involved in alfalfa harvest include
a mower, merger or rake, tedder, forage harvester or baler and multiple different
types of transport vehicles. In the United States, over 6.7 million hectares of alfalfa
were harvested in 2019, worth over $9 billion (USDA/NASS, 2019) with some of
this area seeing multiple passes of machinery traffic. This substantial amount of
production in the US shows the impact machine traffic could have.