For silage corn the entire plant is harvested, chopped up, and packed tightly in a pile and covered with plastic or very large plastic bag. This creates an anaerobic conditions and yeasts/bacteria convert the sugars to alcohol, then acids. This acid preserves the feed for cattle for up to 2 years.
Silage corn is the most common base feed for all dairies and feedlots.
This isn’t even the tallest variety out there. There are others that are 3’ (1m) taller.
The machine with the spout is a chopper. They are a million dollar gigantic woodchipper. These things are fucking terrifying and you should absolutely stay out the field when they are running. Every so often a deer jumps into them…shudder… nightmare fuel.
No way all of this over a paltry 680,000 gallons of water per… oh wow, really? Per acre?? WTF? Ok ok, but how many… HOLY SHIT, 90 million acres?! WTF?!
Dude that’s absolutely insane! ~61,000,000,000,000 gallons of water per year and that’s JUST America!
It’s a bit exaggerated, that doesn’t need to be treated water. Also the corn sweats a lot of that water back out before harvesting.
Most farms have man-made bodies of water that collect the rain in order to water crops as well.
Also it weirdly falls out of the sky sometimes.
Fucking strange! Something so pivotable could be coopted!