Farmers want methods to decrease the amount of potentially harmful pesticides, nutrients, and sediments leaving their fields. Ditches, through their soil and vegetation, can sequester these runoff materials, thereby decreasing potential harm to downstream lakes, rivers, and streams. In recent trials, cows fed red clover silage produced the same amount of milk as cows fed alfalfa silage, and they did so on less feed. Protein efficiency was 17 percent better on red clover than alfalfa. If this improvement applied to only the first half of lactation, when cows are fed the most protein, nitrogen excretion would be reduced by about 1.5 tons per year on a 100-cow dairy farm.
Red clover grows better than alfalfa in the acidic soils common in the Midwest.
ARS will release these newer varieties in the fall of 2000. Seed will be available to farmers in about 2 years. Each year, several serious multicar accidents are caused by high winds' blowing topsoil across highways. Standing crop residue can be 10 times more effective than flat residue in reducing wind erosion in erosion-prone areas of the West, Midwest, and Northern and Southern Plains. Erosion causes the loss of more than 2 billion tons of soil from U.S. cropland each year.