this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
378 points (100.0% liked)

Leopards Ate My Face

6780 readers
1183 users here now

Rules:

  1. The mods are fallible; if you've been banned or had a post/comment removed, please appeal.
  2. Off-topic posts will be removed. If you don't know what "Leopards ate my Face" is, try reading this post.
  3. If the reason your post is on-topic isn't in the article or self-explanatory, you must use a second (high-quality) source to explain why your post fits the criteria.
  4. Articles should be high-quality sources. For a rough idea, check out this list. If it's marked in red, it probably isn't allowed; if it's yellow, exercise caution.
  5. For accessibility reasons, an image of text must either have alt text or a transcription in the post body.
  6. Reposts within 1 year or the Top 100 of all time are subject to removal.
  7. This is not exclusively a US politics community. You're encouraged to post stories about anyone from any place in the world at any point in history as long as you meet the other rules.
  8. All Lemmy.World Terms of Service apply.

Also feel free to check out [email protected] (also active).

Icon credit C. Brück on Wikimedia Commons.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Alfalfa is drought tolerant compared to other forage legumes like clover. This means that during drought the alfalfa will fare better and also yield better than clover or a grass like Timothy or blue grass. However as you can see pasture is also on that list you linked. Fodder crops are harvested for their entire biomass above ground and the amount of biomass is very large. It's a very productive crop and makes a lot of fodder and this fodder is mostly water. Therefore it takes a lot of water to grow. The water required is not extreme in any way however and where I live alfalfa is a rainfed crop that only very rarely has any water deficiency symptoms. The extreme amounts of water applied to alfalfa in the south east of the USA is only because of the desert climate there. Growing beans, corn or potatoes there also requires insane amounts of water. If potatoes were chiefly grown in the desert southeast you bet you would see news articles going around about how terrible potatoes are. In the end it's only a matter of matching the right crop to the right climate. Even the most water hungry crop on earth will not require irrigation in the most rainy place on earth.