Alfalfa Seed

 The ingenuity of the American farmer never ceases to amaze. That’s why we collectively refer to farm producers as being business men. Farms can be thought of as profit centers and the financial returns depend on how the farm is being worked. Here’s an analogy. If a grocery store owner has two products sitting side-by-side in one of his aisles and Product A is selling like hotcakes whereas Product B is gathering dust, it doesn’t take long to figure out that more space and attention goes to Product A.

 So it is with hay. Hay prices in 2007 were excellent. So what happened in 2008? Here’s Vince Matthews with the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Office in Idaho. “ In 2008, the harvested acres were 12,000 and that was down from 15,000 the year before. What we think we’re seeing is with hay prices much higher in the year before and leading up to that there was a tendency to not harvest as much for seed but to harvest it for hay so that fewer acres were harvested for seed.”