Alfalfa

Alfalfa

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Alfalfa hay production and stocks have been declining over the last couple of years. But are we about to turn that situation around? Speaker2: That's not going to happen in the next year and probably not the year after that. Speaker1: O Caitlin McCulloch with the Livestock Marketing Information Center telling us that it's not just the continuing drought that has taken production down, but also. Speaker2: We have seen a massive decline in new seedings of alfalfa. Down 25%. This is the lowest new seedings on record and extremely bullish for hay prices, not as good for livestock and dairy producers. Speaker1: Yes, McCulloch says with the continuing drought and very high prices for other, more profitable competing crops. Speaker2: There just hasn't been a lot of interest in putting in new alfalfa acres. Speaker1: And in fact. Speaker2: We would expect production to take a pretty significant hit in the next year. Speaker1: Now prices are running 20% higher this marketing year and we're predicting about another 18 to 20% rise in the following year. Wow. This alfalfa market is being sculpted by drought and we have been dealing with drought in the US for about two years now. The drought obviously affected yield to some degree, but a lot of this too has been based on declines in acres. We also lost about 6% of acres. Now some of that is because you have higher prices almost across the board in terms of other crops.
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