Why should you plant legumes other than alfalfa?

Overuse of a crop leads to long-term promotion of its pests and diseases. While disaster is frequently averted with breeding efforts and good integrated pest management, national scale failure of a crop is always a possibility.

In the U.S., the corn leaf blight epidemic of 1970 was a large-scale agricultural disaster. In Ireland a combination of potato blight, economic abuses of the British empire and overuse of a single crop led to the Great Famine. More recently, much of the grain sorghum crop in Texas was destroyed by the sugarcane aphid.

Alfalfa is easily the most frequently used legume for hay. Some varieties of alfalfa can be grazed as well. To mitigate the damage caused by a large-scale failure of alfalfa, producers should include other legumes in their forage plan.

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