National hay crop way short,
By DIETER KRIEG
UTTFZ, Pa. - The United
States Department of
Agriculture announced
recently that the U.S. hay
crop is down by 12, per cent
from a year ago. In fact, hay
on hand as of this month is
the lowest since 1964.
But the picture for
Pennsylvania is con
siderably brighter.
Statewide, hay production
was down slightly from a
ago. The eastern half of
oie state reportedly had an
abundance of hay.
Paul Z. Martin, who deals
with hay and straw each
week in Leola, told Lan
Pennsylvania hay abundant
caster Farming this week
that he’s noticing buyers at
his auction this Fall that he
has never seen before.
They’re coming from as far
away as Virginia and
southern Maryland, where
drought was a problem this
Summer. “Buyers from
Virginia - it’s very unusual to
see’em here,” Martin
commented.
“There’s hay around the
eastern part of Penn
sylvania,” Martin continued,
“and also in the Finger
Lakes region of New'York
State.
Martin guessed that there
was more hay available in
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this area than in most other
years, but a lot of had gotten
wet, leaving top quality hay
as a somewhat scarce item.
He noted that his top load of
alfalfa on Wednesday
commanded a price of $lO3
per ton. The top load of straw
fetched $B3 per ton, a
number of loads went for as
high as $79.
The Lancaster Countian
considered the prices as
“very high,” especially in
view of file fact that Wed
nesday’s sale was held under
wet conditions, and some
loads had come in prac
tically soaked due to not
being covered during the
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downpour. “We had a buying
crowd today,” Martin said.
He estimates that at least
15 per cent of this year’s
Pennsylvania hay crop got
wet.
Charles Hammond,
assistant statistician at the
Pennsylvania Crop
Reporting Service, told
Lancaster Farming that the
Keystone State’s hay crop as
of Oct. 1 was rated at 4.3
million tons. That compares
with just under 4.4. million
tons last year. The
Harrisburg official noted in
his remarks that this figure
is for all hay. The alfalfa
harvest is actually up
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Lancaster Farming, Saturday, Oct. 23,1976
slightly from the year
before. He described the first
cuttings as “average” in
quality while successive
cuttings rated somewhat
better than that. “There’s a
pretty good demand for
Pennsylvania hay,” the
statistician concluded.
Nationally, the U.S. hay
yield per acre is seen as
averaging 1.96 tons, which is
down from 2.15 tons per acre
last year and the lowest
since 1966.
Paul Hively, a York
County farmer who deals in
hay in his area, echoed many
of Martin’s comments. He
said his business was steady
but that a lot of hay he’s
looking at is “not near first
class.” He buys most all of
his hay in York County and
sells in Lancaster County.
Ira Zartman from nor
thern Lancaster County buys
quite a bit of hay from
southern New York State. He
reports abundant supplies in
that area as well as
throughout eastern Penn
sylvania. “But there’s not
much good hay - there’s a lot
of poor hay around,” he
concluded.
17