Pastures rarely fail overnight – and with strategic management and interseeding, they don’t need a full reset to recover.

Before planting a cover crop, Hines urges producers to ask one key question: What’s your objective? A clear goal can turn a good idea into real on‑farm benefits.

Spring-seeded alfalfa fields are especially vulnerable to erosion. New field trials in southern Wisconsin suggest a promising solution: establishing alfalfa into a green, growing cover crop.

Farmers in different western U.S. regions grow different types of alfalfa seeds to meet the needs of those regions and climates.

As an alfalfa stand ages and thins, the primary question becomes: Is this stand good enough to keep? Now is a good time to evaluate stands as more time is allowed for planning crop rotations than when stands are evaluated in the spring and determined to be uneconomic.

Over time with many common farming practices, we start to lose some of those minerals to insolubility, erosion or crop exportation. As with sentences, a soil's integrity can deteriorate as these minerals are depleted, leading to reduced plant health, more pest pressure and overall harvest productivity decline.

The most effective weed control programs for summer annual weeds in many crops include herbicides that deliver long-lasting, residual weed control.

Producers who have crops and livestock are finding that annual crops can fill some grazing gaps and help get the soil in better health before replanting a pasture or the next crop.