The Economics of Hay

As we drove up to the Park Sunday, we took what I like to call the back way, along Ida Road into Luray. This road goes through some farming areas (and large lot development, unfortunately) before curving around to cross Hawksbill Creek near Willow Grove Mill. Ida is where a lot of the folks who moved off the mountains ended up as the Park was being established.

These photos are dark, in the Valley we were under clouds and Ida is nestled up in the hills close to the Park. In fact it is due west of Stonyman mountain.

I've been watching the haying all spring and summer and as we drove along the road we passed this house, where someone's been doing a lot of work this week...last week, the tractor was there and that was all...this week, as you can see, truckloads of big rounds are coming in and there are quite a few rounds already put in for storage.

I thought I might look into the economics of a hay operation, so did some Googling over the last few days and what follows is a summary of what I've found. Some readers may be more familiar with this process than I am, so I welcome any comments or corrections that add insight to this discussion.

• From a 2005 state report, New Jersey hay yields per acre ranged from about 1.8 to 2.3 tons, depending on the type of hay. For estimating purposes, let's say that is 2 tons per acre.


• From a 2008 USDA report, good quality alfalfa was getting $100-120 per ton in big rounds. Square bales were higher, I guess because of the additional labor involved.


• Finally, from another 2008 USDA report, the estimated weight for big rounds is between 500 to 3,000 pounds, depending on the baler equipment used.
  

From this, I conclude that you can get about $250 an acre or so with this hay farming. In my very limited observations, it seems that there are two seasons here in Virginia, but I haven't noticed that the fields are planted twice with hay. I've also read about rotating crops with corn - I'll need to look into those prices and yields yet...but this means that you can generate $500 or more per acre with plantings - very much a book estimate, and I am sure that there can be a lot of variance based on equipment, operation scale, farmer experience, and microclimate.

I have an article from Progressive Farmer to discuss tomorrow, that will shed some additional light on this topic.