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Obert Chifamba

Agri-Insight

It’s so toothsome that cows will always enjoy wolfing it down! Farmers fondly call it the ‘king of forage’ for its high nutritive value. That’s lucerne!

Lucerne (Medicago sativa) is also known as ‘alfalfa,’ which means ‘best fodder’ — and this says it all. 

It yields a large volume of high quality hay that’s rich in protein. 

This plant species is especially beneficial to animals if harvested at an early stage of growth when it has the highest amount of protein and lowest amount of fibre.

It is not a secret that the meat, eggs and dairy products from pasture-raised animals have proved to be healthier and more nutritious than from those raised in confinement operations.

On the one hand, lucerne is not only a valuable animal feed, but also has alternative uses, for instance, as a health food for humans. 

It can be used against allergies, arthritis, pregnancy sickness, stomach ulcers, and bad breath and is sometimes used either as pills, capsules or as a tea.

 This implies that if the lucerne project Government has introduced in Chiredzi is developed to fullness, even people will benefit too.

Government’s recently engaged a private investor to grow Lucerne grass in Chiredzi in clear acknowledgement of the high value it is attaching to the project and ultimately the revival of both the dairy sector and the national herd.

The development will boost livestock production in the Lowveld and earn the country foreign currency.

The project that is being undertaken on 6 000 hectares will definitely play a pivotal role in the revival of the livestock sector through maximum utilisation of land. 

Essentially, the project will leave a legacy of nitrogen rich soils years after its conclusion and will also benefit crops planted afterwards. 

A following wheat crop, for instance, would require up to 70 percent less applied nitrogen than a wheat crop in a cereal rotation. 

The nitrogen benefit may linger in the soil for up to three years afterwards. 

Lucerne belongs to the legume family, which means that, working with soil bacteria called rhizobia, it is able to fix nitrogen to make it available for plant growth.

But the biggest benefit of them all is that it can also be an income generating programme for the community in which it is being run. 

Excess lucerne can always be sold to those that need it as hay and silage, while livestock from other farms can graze it on a rental basis. 

It can also be exported to countries where there are no suitable conditions for its production and generate foreign currency for the country.

It is important to acknowledge that dry regions like Chiredzi are always experiencing problems with inadequate pastures for livestock, yet lucerne can grow to maturity either on irrigation or with little precipitation.

Livestock production is one of the key pillars of Masvingo province’s economy, but there have been worrisome numbers of livestock deaths, hence the timely long-term lucerne project intervention by the Government.

The Government duly put a plan on growing the drought-resistant lucerne grass in the drought-stricken area of Chiredzi by gazetting Statutory Instrument 50 of 2021 on February 26, 2021 in a development that will boost livestock production in the Lowveld and earn the country foreign currency.

Areas like Chikombedzi, Majijimba, and Malisanga in Chiredzi South have recorded the highest number of livestock deaths in recent years in the wake of successive poor rainfall seasons.

It is refreshing to note that the investor, Dendairy, is prepared to expand the project to other parts of the country after debuting on 6 000ha of land.

 A similar project is already running in Kwekwe in the Midlands.

Lucerne is set to become a major forage substitute for many livestock farmers given that prices of supplementary feeds have shot out of the reach of many.

Incidentally, lucerne grass is on-demand for the export market and Chiredzi is an ideal place for its production, thanks to the high temperatures in the region. 

Lucerne or alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is a deep-rooted, temperate, perennial pasture legume that is well adapted to mixed farming systems.

 An established lucerne pasture provides an alternative source of forage for animal production, especially outside the growing season of annual crops and pastures.

With proper management, lucerne can score yields averaging between 15 and 30 tonnes per hectare although the first harvest usually scores between 1,5 and two tonnes per hectare. 

Yields start rising with subsequent harvests and also depend on the region, plant population, maintenance of the crop, its variety, weather and stage of maturity at the time of harvesting. 

Given such a performance record, lucerne can be produced for business purposes with the farmer guaranteed a yield even when crops record outright failures.

 It can be a fall-back position for farmers in dry regions where natural grasses normally struggle to survive in the face of adverse weather conditions.

It makes sense for farmers adjacent to or situated in dry regions to produce lucerne as a source of livelihood and harvest it for sale during the driest periods of the year when feed will be scarce. 

The good thing is that even the farmer who does not have irrigation facilities can still produce it successfully using natural rains. 

A rain-fed lucerne pasture produces between four and eight tonnes of dry matter per hectare per year, which is similar to annual pasture, but production is spread more evenly over the year. 

Once established, the fodder crop has good drought tolerance and is well suited to irregular rainfall patterns, but it will appear to go dormant during extended dry periods.

It can grow in areas with as little as 325mm annual rainfall and still provides good summer production in areas with up to 700mm rainfall. 

Out-of-season production can be used to reduce supplementary feeding requirements. 

Lucerne produces high quality green feed. It has high energy — digestibility of between 65 and 72 percent with a metabolisable energy of eight to 11 mega joules per kilogramme — and high protein (12-24 percent).

It is also a source of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamins A and D and can be grown as a pasture phase, removed and followed by a crop phase or it can be over sown with crops (pasture cropped). 

It is known to fix between 10 and 20kilogrammes per hectare of nitrogen for every tonne of dry matter produced, increasing soil nitrogen levels for subsequent crops.

Once established, it can help manage herbicide resistant weeds with its competitiveness and tolerance of some broad-spectrum herbicides. 

Effective weed management will increase the legume component and nitrogen accumulation from a Lucerne based pasture. 

Lucerne’s deep roots can dry the soil, but help increase the capacity of soil to store water in times of excess, which reduces groundwater recharge in the process.

 In a way it also helps improve the state of the soil for other cropping purposes.