Hay is plants cut and dried so that animals can eat them later. Almost every quiz on this site asks which state grew the most of something. This one asks a different question. USDA’s 2025 crop survey also prints, state by state, how many tons of alfalfa hay came off one single acre — not how big the state is, not how big the farm is, just what one acre gave. USDA printed that number for 41 states; it withheld none, and the other nine have no alfalfa line in this table at all. Which of these three got the most out of each acre? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Hay is basically grass, and grass needs rain. So I am taking the wettest, greenest state on the list and I am already imagining the pile. 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Arizona — 7.4 tons per acre tons of hay off a single acre — the largest number USDA printed for any state — against a national figure of 3.42 tons per acre. More than double the country’s number. And it is not one odd state: the five printed below Arizona are California (6.8), Washington (5), Nevada (4.7), Oregon (4.7) and Utah (4.3), and every one of them is in the West. The first state on the list from anywhere else is Iowa, at 4.2 — and it is not even alone down there: New Mexico printed exactly the same number. Now lay a second map on top. In NOAA’s 2024 statewide precipitation figures the state that got the least rain and snow of all was Nevada, and the second least was Arizona — so the two driest states in the country are both sitting in the top four here. Which means the water on these fields is not only whatever fell on them. The University of Arizona describes its own alfalfa plots as “typical of agricultural areas of the low elevation deserts of Arizona where 8 to 10 harvests of alfalfa are common each year,” on ground where “All fields were laser-leveled and alfalfa was irrigated using the border-strip method.” Eight to ten harvests off the same field in one year, on plantings that the same report says “typically remain productive for 3 to 4 years.” One last turn: Arizona is not a big alfalfa state. In the acreage table beside this one it sits 19th with 280,000 acres, while South Dakota has the most at 1,490,000. Most acres and most-per-acre are two different questions, and they have two different answers. Biscuit’s Field Note is about what this plant does when you cut it.
📚 BackgroundAlfalfa is not a grass. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service describes the plant this way: “The plant has a tap root which may penetrate deep into the soil,” and “New growth occurs from buds in the crown” — which is why a field can be cut, and then cut again, without being replanted. NRCS’s guidance is to cut again “at ¼ bloom stage or after a 5 to 6 week recovery period.” How many times that happens in a year depends on where the field is. The University of Arizona’s alfalfa trial report describes its own test fields as “typical of agricultural areas of the low elevation deserts of Arizona where 8 to 10 harvests of alfalfa are common each year, and stands typically remain productive for 3 to 4 years,” and adds how the water gets there: “All fields were laser-leveled and alfalfa was irrigated using the border-strip method.” The report is describing its own trial fields and the farming region around them, not every alfalfa field in the state.(USDA NRCS, Plant Fact Sheet, “Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.)”; University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, az1928 (March 2022), “Arizona Cooperative Alfalfa Forage Yield Trials (1993-2020)” (Michael J. Ottman, Jeffrey W. White and Steven E. Smith))↗ (opens in a new tab)
🐕Biscuit's fun facts
📚 Stated as fact by textbooks / public agencies
Farming the desert with river water is very old in Arizona. The Park Service says the Hohokam people are probably most famous for their irrigation canals (ditches that carry river water to fields) along the Salt and Gila rivers — the largest and most complex irrigation systems of any culture in the New World north of Peru. Hohokam farmers grew crops in the same places for hundreds of years.
Much later, settlers dug a canal on the ancient Hohokam lands and founded Phoenix. But the Salt River was unpredictable: sometimes a flood, sometimes a trickle. After terrible droughts, farmers asked the federal government for help, and Roosevelt Dam was built in the mountains to store water for summer, dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1911. The Park Service says it was built to store water that would, in time, turn desert soil into farmland.
Hay is basically grass, and grass needs rain. So I am taking the wettest, greenest state on the list and I am already imagining the pile. 🐾
3Compare
Alfalfa hay cut from one acre (tons, 2025)
🇺🇸 United States (national)3.42 tons per acre
Arizona#17.4 tons per acre
Most: Arizona (7.4 tons per acre); smallest of the 41 states USDA printed: New Hampshire (1.2 tons per acre).
Note: tons of alfalfa hay per harvested acre in 2025, from USDA’s annual crop survey. This is a rate, not a total — a small state can beat a big one, and sitting high here does not mean growing a lot of hay. USDA splits hay into an alfalfa line and a line for hay that is not alfalfa; this is the alfalfa line. The United States bar is USDA’s own national figure, not the average of the 41 state numbers. USDA NASS. USDA printed a 2025 alfalfa yield for 41 states. No state carries a withheld mark in this table, and the other nine — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — have no alfalfa line here at all. Those nine are not inside the national figure either: in the matching acreage table the printed states add up exactly to USDA’s national alfalfa acreage, so the states ranked here are the whole of what USDA counted. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
USDA printed a 2025 alfalfa yield for 41 states. No state carries a withheld mark in this table, and the other nine — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — have no alfalfa line here at all. Those nine are not inside the national figure either: in the matching acreage table the printed states add up exactly to USDA’s national alfalfa acreage, so the states ranked here are the whole of what USDA counted. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2025)
Sources
Data as of: 2025
USDA NASS Quick Stats: HAY, ALFALFA - YIELD, MEASURED IN TONS / ACRE, 2025 annual crop survey, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-05) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). This is a rate, not a total: tons of alfalfa hay per harvested acre. USDA printed a 2025 alfalfa yield for 41 states; no state carries a withheld mark here, and the other nine — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — have no alfalfa line in this table at all. Those nine are not inside the national figure either: in the matching acreage table the 41 printed states add up exactly to USDA’s national alfalfa acreage, so the states ranked here are the whole of what USDA counted. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. The national figure is USDA’s own average for the country, not the average of the 41 state numbers. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick FIELD CROPS / HAY / HAY, ALFALFA - YIELD, MEASURED IN TONS / ACRE, Survey, year 2025, period YEAR, Total domain, and compare states.