FELD 1/2025

Advantages of alfalfa We

Advantages of alfalfa We have fields where alfalfa was grown 20 years ago, but you can still see the effects today. BERND STARICK At first glance, alfalfa is not particularly beautiful, especially in summer. It is a weedy plant that grows to over a meter in height and bears small purple to light pink flowers. Alfalfa originally comes from South Asia. The Romans are said to have fed it to their horses, as did Arab conquerors later on in Spain. This is how alfalfa came to Europe. Today, it is marketed as a modern »superfood« for horses and is one of the most important fodder plants for cattle. Most of alfalfa’s qualities are hidden invisibly in the soil. The first is a taproot that reaches deepest into the ground of all cultivated plants used in Germany and loosens the soil several meters deep. The agricultural cooperative »Bauern AG Neißetal« cultivates a good 700 hectares with alfalfa in Lower Lusatia, as an integral part of the crop rotation together with cereals. The alfalfa fields are plowed every four years. The deeper root channels remain intact, keeping the soil loose and retaining rainwater in the fields, ensuring active soil life and increasing the humus content. This has a positive effect on soil fertility. »We have fields where alfalfa was grown 20 years ago, but you can still see the effects,« says Bernd Starick, CEO of Bauern AG Neißetal. 06

Advantages of alfalfa From 2020 to 2023, Starick and his colleagues, together with the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP, tested whether alfalfa could be used both as valuable animal feed and as a raw material for bio-based plastics. The research project was named FUFAPRO, in short. ALFALFA ROOTS AS PROBLEM SOLVERS Starick was not always a fan of alfalfa. That began when his business took over the recultivation of former coal mining areas in the region northeast of Cottbus in 2000. The the agricultural cooperative had once lost around 800 hectares to coal mining. The land returned by the mining company is, in fact, biologically lifeless soil without a humus layer. »Alfalfa roots are a problem solver for many of the issues associated with these soils. Recultivation is almost impossible without alfalfa,« says Bernd Starick, summing up two decades of experience in soil restoration. »Alfalfa is used alongside sweet clover for the recultivation of these soils because both plants root very well and build up humus. But alfalfa has other major advantages,« explains Dr. Johann Bachinger from the working group »Resource-Efficient Cropping Systems« at ZALF, who is in charge of the FUFAPRO project. With its deep and branched root system, alfalfa can draw water from layers that other plants cannot reach. »Alfalfa has the highest drought tolerance of all crops,« Bachinger emphasizes. Once the plant has established itself, it copes very well with drought. Alfalfa also harbors a host of invisible but useful helpers in its roots. Belonging to the legume family, the plant lives symbiotically with nodule bacteria (rhizobia). These can bind nitrogen from the air by converting it into ammonium. This makes the nitrogen available to the plant. To ensure that the process works, the plant in turn provides exactly the quantity of oxygen to the bacteria’s nodules which they need to function efficiently. »Every hectare of alfalfa fertilizes the equivalent of three-quarters of a hectare of grain for us,« summarizes farmer Starick. In addition, it is the most important protein-rich feed for the high-performance cows at his farm. Agricultural engineer Bachinger, for his part, estimates nitrogen fixation in absolute terms at 350 to 500 kilograms per hectare per year. For the agricultural business in Lusatia, the nitrogen brought into the soil by alfalfa is worth its weight in gold, because the production of nitrogen 07