Alfalfa is a great crop. It has deep roots which store carbon in the soil, it is drought tolerant, it's high yielding and it's nitrogen fixating meaning it improves the soil quality and does not require nitrogen fertilizer which normally is a huge carbon footprint. Overall fantastic crop if you need fodder for ruminant animals. The big problem is farming it on an absurd scale in the middle of the damn desert. Alfalfa does not require irrigation in regions with ample rainfall.
Barley_Man
joined 2 years ago
In this specific case isreal asked residents of Gaza city, a subpart of the Gaza strip to move to a more southern position in the Gaza strip. Like asking people to move from Manhattan to Brooklyn because they are going to blow up Manhattan. People are capable of moving within the Gaza strip. That doesn't mean there will be housing for them however.
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.