Hay production is up, prices are down, N.M. dairies finding buying bales closer to home

Hay production is up, prices are down, N.M. dairies finding buying bales closer to home The Durango Herald By Mary Shinn A wet spring and early summer has given rise to an abundant hay crop for local farmers and lower prices for their product regionally. Those raising hay for horses and beef cattle have seen prices drop from about $10 for a small bale to about $8.25 in the last two years, said Tom Campbell, the agronomy manager for Basin Coop. “We’re seeing a small drop in price, it’s not horrific,” he said. Regionally, $7 for a small bale of premium hay is the current average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It’s going to be a good buyers market,” said Bob Bragg, a local farm and ranch consultant. According to data from the Colorado Department of Agriculture premium alfalfa is going for $308 per ton, or $10 per bale, and certified-weed free grass is going for $215 per ton, or $7 per bale. The Colorado Weekly Hay report for Sept. 3 stated that market activity on all classes of hay remained slow on light demand. Alfalfa traded steady compared with the previous week, the report said, with most of the trade activity on hay with a 150 or less relative feed value. Several factors are driving prices lower. Dairies, which are grappling with decreased demand for milk, need less hay for dairy cows. And lingering West Coast shipyard strikes have caused inventory to back up; and a stronger U.S. dollar makes domestically produced products more expensive to export. Not only has the drought broken in most of the La Plata County, but it has also eased in New Mexico and parts of California, leading to lower hay prices across the entire Southwest, said George Van Den Berg, a local farmer. It will be possible for most local ranchers to make up for the drop in price with a greater volume of sales, Campbell said. There is also good demand for the local small-bale hay in Texas and Arizona because some local farms are able to raise premium hay, he said. Small-bale hay is generally purchased for horses or cattle that are being fed for slaughter. These bales can be grass or a hay-alfalfa mix. In general, the rains in May and June didn’t damage too many fields of cut hay drying in the fields in La Plata County, Campbell said. In some cases, the farmers waited to cut until after the rains had ended, and as a result some were a lower quality because the hay was more mature, he said. However, those raising alfalfa in Montezuma County to sell to dairies in New Mexico and Texas are facing very different market, Bragg said. There have been very few alfalfa sales this year because it is much cheaper for dairies to purchase hay from farms in New Mexico and Texas, Bragg said. “It’s been a really slow year for them,” he said. While there have been large harvests, a lot of it was rain-damaged, Bragg said. This type of hay can still be sold, but not to dairies who are looking for the highest-quality hay. He said many farmers are concerned because they don’t have anywhere to store the abundance of alfalfa until demand picks up again. “The hay buyers are not coming up and even making offers,” he said. One ton of high-quality alfalfa is selling for $175 in Southwest Colorado, according to the USDA. Last year at this time, a ton of similar alfalfa was selling for $250 to $280 per ton. But the USDA was not reporting sales for lower-quality hay, likely because sales are so infrequent, Bragg said. Those farmers who can wait to sell their products to the dairies in the winter could face better market conditions when supply from New Mexico and Texas farms runs low, Bragg said. “We may have hay movement that we’re not seeing right now,” he said. Danny Decker, owner of Decker Hay Farms in Cortez, estimates that current hay prices are down at least 50 percent from this time last year. “My good-quality hay is still moving steadily – it might be as much as last year, and it’s moving for less money. There are a lot of factors that go into the prices. It’s tough right now.”