Highlighting one popular summer Yuma agriculture product: Sudan Grass

Eduardo Morales
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) – On Tuesday’s HomeGrown report, we highlighted Sudan grass, one of the popular summer Yuma agricultural products.
While the city is famous for its winter produce, the soil doesn’t rest during the summer months.
Lettuce in the fields is now replaced with ten-foot-tall fields of sudan grass.
The grass is grown for hay to feed livestock and planting seed production.
“The hay is often grown for the Asian export market where it mimics the fine stemmed rice hay, which is in short supply in Asia, when growing for the export market planting density is critical to produce the desired size and texture,” says Robert Masson, assistant agricultural agent at the local U of A Cooperative Extension.
The grass is typically planted and grown from mid-March to August.