Weather hurts hay quality, price
A tractor follows the long lines of dried alfalfa hay turning them into bails in a field along a rural road outside Walla Walla in 2016. Quality and price are both down this year, say Basin hay growers.
Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP - File
COLUMBIA BASIN — The first cutting is in for alfalfa hay in the Basin, and it’s not all it should be, according to Mark Anderson of Anderson Hay & Grain.
“We were hoping to get a lot more high-test supreme and premium alfalfa for dairies,” Anderson said. “We struggled a little bit with weather that interrupted the perfect harvest window. So there’s been a fair amount of inventory that’s just under that supreme and premium testing.”
The USDA grades hay at five levels, according to its website: Supreme, premium, good, fair and utility. Anderson’s customers are primarily concerned with premium- or supreme-grade hay, he said.
The strange weather patterns this year have put a damper on the hay cutting, so to speak. Hay’s moisture content prior to baling is critical to its quality, according to a publication from the Washington State University Extension, and rainy weather and other atmospheric conditions can make or break a crop.
“It’s not near where it was last year,” said Greg Walter, of Schoonover Farms in Odessa. “In the south Basin they got rained on like crazy. Quality was a little off.”
The price for hay is down between 40% and 50% from last year, Walter said.
“Last year the demand was high,” he said. “You just had to wave a flag and say ‘I’ve got hay,” and they came running.”
Oregon and Idaho had similar difficulty with the weather, according to the USDA NASS report.
“Most of the buyers right now are looking for the supreme and premium,” Anderson said, “so they’re busy trying to find that hay in other parts of the west coast.”
“We even had some of that early smoke from Canada, which hasn’t helped. We’re hoping (with) second cutting we’ll see more of the supreme- and premium-testing hay, because that’s kind of where most of the demand is right now.”
First cutting is still underway for timothy, Anderson said, and the second cutting for alfalfa is beginning in the Tri-Cities area.
“We’re hoping that we get some high-testing hay from that,” he said. “No rain and decent curing conditions.”