Erosion is a HUGE problem here, due to all the hills, so crops are inter-planted like this to help prevent that. The darker green is feed/seed corn and the lighter is either soybean or alfalfa. Sometimes Wheat or Rye or Oats are planted, too. It’s really quite pretty.
Pretty much everything around here is for dairy and beef cattle to eat and or use for winter bedding.
Before Beau bought our current farm, (1983; the ‘farm’ has been here since 1900) these ‘practices’ were not always in place, so if I need really ‘good’ dirt, Beau will bring some up from the pasture below us. That is some AWESOME stuff, as everything GOOD about the soil ended up down there back then and it’s never grown anything other that grass and wildflowers.
I never would have guessed that was an erosion control technique.
The Palouse in eastern Washington and western Idaho has long rolling hills like that (not quite as steep as yours) used mainly to grow wheat, but vineyards are now popular totaling over 800 in 2015.
The Palouse hills are steep enough to cause traversing farm equipment to tip over. Leveling combines were invented in 1891 to solve that problem, but they had to be manually adjusted which was hard work. Self-leveling combines were invented 50 years later.
Planted winter wheat...
A few months later...