Well, one can pay the higher price for the organic version. Standlee is one brand that sells organic as well as regular alfalfa pellets - the organic is available here at Tractor Supply.

Standlee organic alfalfa pellets

I have been known to spend time (like, many hours) researching and musing about the possibility of growing my own - for its pretty blue flowers, hot dry climate friendliness, nitrogen-fixing qualities for the soil, and use cut down as a dried hay mulch, as well as for its tea-making possibilities.... I do love a multi-purpose plant... :-)

I no longer use alfalfa anything. Not due to any potential Vitamin R contamination but because I have four Toy Fox Terrors in whose domain my roses intrude. EVERYTHING organic is a "dog treat". All "pet safe" snail and slug products are "dog treats". So, I use Miracle Gro fertilizer because it doesn't attract them. If you're worried about Round Up in the alfalfa, then perhaps you should also be concerned about it in the "organic" mulches and soils you purchase for use. It's very likely that any "organic" product that includes any garden wastes, contains Round Up or one of its competitors. There are many weed and feed products out there used on lawns.

I know Roundup is now in Cheerios and oatmeal. All very sad. I worry about using neighbors leaves for this reason too.

Much of Europe has banned Round Up, yet it's been found in Human mother's breast milk in Germany. A test was run on many California wines and nearly every variety they tested had Round Up in it. Anything GMO is likely to have Round Up in it. "Round Up Ready" is one of the main reasons for anything to be GMO.

I don’t quite understand this. If alfalfa sprayed with Roundup, wouldn’t it kill the alfalfa plant? Or is that the idea to kill it so it can be harvested? Would alfalfa pellets purchased for animal feed be any safer?

Monsanto, and some others, have genetically modified, engineered, a number of crops to be "Round Up Ready", meaning they are Round Up resistant. They can be sprayed with Round Up and not be killed. The theory is, you can now spray the crops in the fields with Round Up and kill the weeds but not the crops. And, it works...to a degree. Of course the main issue is, Round Up isn't as "safe" and "non toxic" as has been promoted for several decades and our courts and Federal Agencies are stacked with Monsanto lawyers (deliberately engineered, also) who have consistently sided with the corporation against the benefit of the citizenry. As much at issue is, the weeds mutate and we "unnaturally select" for Round Up resistance much more quickly than the crops do, so we then have to have something stronger, more "toxic" to weeds with which to spray the crops to kill the resistant weeds. Guess what? Our government has already approved 2-4-D resistant crops! Remember 2-4-D? And, there is also Dicamba...

And, no, alfalfa pellets intended for animal feed would be no safer. The GMO grains intended for YOUR feed are already sprayed with Round Up and perhaps 2-4-D, though pet and animal feeds are generally a little safer than OUR food as they are tested to a bit higher standards than ours. This from someone who is a USDA employee whose job IS to test food safety. Theoretically, if you bought "organic" anything, it SHOULD not have been sprayed with Round Up, but that doesn't mean it doesn't contain traces of Round Up. It's in the water. It's in the food supply. It's IN people and animals...

I buy Espoma organic alfalfa meal and I top dress with it around the base of my plants twice a season.

I have not heard of a GMO versions of alfalfa, but I just checked and I see that it is now so. I personally am not worried about GMO foodstuffs because of the generic modification in and of itself, but I am concerned about the use of RoundUp. Given that the most common reason to modify crops is to make them RoundUp ready, I do pay attention to a food's GMO status.

The most common crops in the US to be genetically modified are corn, wheat, canola (rapeseed), cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, soybeans, all commodities Also, if you are eating papaya, you are eating a genetically modified food. There was a ringspot virus wiping papaya for which there was no other cure than genetic modification. We would have lost them altogether otherwise.

Here is a link you can use to check. I see that there are potatoes, squash, and salmon on the list as well. I think those may be recent additions.

https://www.bestfoodfacts.org/what-foods-are-gmo/

As far as I can tell, there is no GM wheat being sold anywhere. There were a few cases of contamination with ‘escaped’ GM wheat, but it is not grown for trade and consumption. Not much good news, but at least one off the list.

but they spray most wheat crops with round up to make it all the wheat berries to ripen at the same time. , they don't have to be gmo

How does that work, Lesli? I mean, how does the RU not kill the wheat if it's not modified to withstand it, and how does RU make the grains ripen at the same time? I'm just curious.

The way I understand it they spray it at just before harvest to kill it all wheat at the same time. When you kill wheat it causes the wheat berries to ripen. If left to ripen naturally there will be uneven ripening. I'm not an expert, and don't want to spread misinformation, and truthfully there are many differing accounts of how its used. But honestly, I just don't want it used anywhere around my food.

Lesli, where do they do this? Not doubting it's done somewhere,but there are several farmers in my family and it my area at least, I've never heard of this.

No, wait, I'm mad about this too - this is the stupidest use of an herbicide I've heard of. This is how weeds become resistant, and farmers have to pay out the wazoo for the newest (and under patent) stuff to keep their fields clean and their yields up. Are they even applying the stuff under the right conditions so it doesn't drift - if it's windy enough, or hot enough (I think even if the humidity is high enough) you aren't supposed to spray!

Speaking of yields, spray rigs will crush the plants in their tracks (there's no way around that - if they're young enough the crop plants will usually recover) and that cuts into returns. Paying for 'chemicals' and their application is a big-time expense for farmers - why on earth would someone want to pay that twice?

Seriously, who is dumb enough to do this?! They belong in the public stocks for us to throw rotten produce at. Sorry to rant; this is my family's livelihood (not mine personally though) so I kinda see red when people stupidly make things a lot more difficult for us. These new herbicides really do help farmers - the boost in yields (and thus profits) and help small-to-midsize owner/operator producers stay in business. Idiots like this make everyone's life harder, and I really, really wish we still forcibly subjected people to public scorn when they %$#-up like this.

Hmmmm..... summer before last, when I still had a couple of roses in pots, I sprinkled alphalfa pellets on top a couple of times. To my surprise, the plants acted like they were shocked or stunned...took a couple of days for them to recover. I'm new to roses, but the experience left me scratching my head - I thought alfalfa was supposed to make roses grow better! Never thought of Round-Up Ready alfalfa - where I lived back in the day, it was all about soybeans. Now from reading, I see it's all about everything. Crazy....

I doubt Round-Up-Ready has anything to do with the reaction to alfalfa pellets. The alfalfa does not contain Round-Up, it can survive it. Maybe the alfalfa gets too concentrated in pots?

I also found that using Roundup just before harvest is only very rarely done,1-3% of cases or so. I am not a fan of Monsanto at all, and I try to stay away from GM, but here we are getting into the area of speculation ;-).

I would assume the logic is that if plants are RU-ready, it's more likely they will be sprayed with RU.

And, IIRC, properly conducted independent trials have shown RU can enter and travel through soil and negatively affect other plants, which show distinctly less thriving, no matter what Monsanto says about its supposed innocuousness/non-transmission.

Comtesse, you are right, that makes sense. I was not thinking about what that would imply. Thanks for setting the record straight ;-).