-Foraging Around, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 21,2001
226
FORAGE STATISTICS
NEW FOR 2000
CROP YEAR
I am pleased to announce the first
measure of all hay harvested in
Pennsylvania, not just dry baled
hay. Over the years, making haylage
has become a very prominent prac
tice in the northern dairy states. We
have been remiss in not generating
statistics for what is nearly one
third of all hay harvested in Penn
sylvania.
Historically, only dry hay acreage
and production has been collected
from farmers and published in the
annual “Crop Production” annual
leport published every January. All
dry hay statistics began in 1866. In
1919, breakdowns were added for
Alfalfa dry hay and Other dry hay.
The 2000 crop year brings the first
measure of haylage and greenchop
in Pennsylvania and seven other
states across the U.S.
Seven other field offices of
USDA’s National Agricultural
Statistics Service (NASS) were also
involved in this pilot program to
measure all hay production annu
ally. The states publishing dry hay
and haylage/greenchop production
are Michigan, Minnesota, New
York, Pennsylvania, Vermont,
Washington, West Virginia, and
Wisconsin. The only large haylage/
greenchop state excluded from the
pilot program was California, which
was the third largest state according
to the 1997 Census of Agriculture.
As always, the NASS January 11,
2001 Crop Production report pub-
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NASS
Agriculture Counts
By Marc Tosiano
Pa, State Statistician
fished dry hay production for 48
states broken down by All Hay. Al
falfa Hay, and Other Hay. The
report also contained four new
tables with acreage, yield, and pro
duction statistics for the eight pilot
states.
The first two new tables show
Haylage and Greenchop production
as green weight for Alfalfa only and
all hay acreage. The second pair of
tables combine dry hay statistics
with the new Haylage/Greenchop
data to publish all hay harvested
(forage) statistics on a dry equiva
lent basis broken down by Alfalfa
acres and all acres. (For the com
plete report, see http://
usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/
nassr/field/pcp-bban/.)
The Pennsylvania Department of
Agriculture (PDA), our partner in
agricultural statistics, has asked us
to divide the state hay statistics into
county level information. We have
provided this service for many years
for dry hay. The 2000 crop year
would be the first time we generate
county statistics for all hay har
vested, including haylage/
greenchop. If we can make statisti-
RRIS
rhe Way Out
cally sound estimates by county, this
information will be published in our
2000-2001 Annual Summary. The
annual summary is also published in
hard copy in the fall.
We hope it won’t come, but
sooner or later we will have to sur
vive another poor growing season.
Both state and county figures are
very important in learning where
average hay yields are unusually
low. This information is available to
farmers and grower organizations to
be able to search for other sources of
feed in a lean hay year. Government
agencies also use this data when
they must decide on financial assist
ance to hay farmers.
In 1999, our dry hay statistics
were used by PDA and other agen
cies as a major factor in detecting
low yields and administering an as
sistance program. Unfortunately,
these new haylage statistics were not
vet available to better evaluate the
haylage and greenchop situation.
Cooperative extension is another
major user of these new hay statis
tics and information about all other
commodities. They need solid statis
tics to show how and where they
need to serve Pennsylvania agricul
ture. Statistics are an important
part of justifying extension research
grants and positions in various
county offices or in State College. I
have met many agents recently and
they often tell me how important
these statistics are to their work in
cooperative extension.
Now for the numbers:
In 2000, Pennsylvania ranked
16th in the nation for dry hay pro
duction with 4.4 million tons of dry
hay. After adding haylage/
greenchop, Pennsylvania ranked
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third among the eight pilot states
with 6.3 million tons of hay on a dry
equivalent basis.
Only Wisconsin and Minnesota
produced more with 11.7 and 8.7
million, tons, respectively. Two mil
lion acres were harvested for hay in
Pennsylvania in the 2000 crop year.
Of that, 1.8 million acres were cut at
least once for dry hay and 620,000
acres were cut for haylage/
greenchop. Dry hay harvest yielded
2.46 tons per acre while haylage/
greenchop yielded 6.25 green tons
per acre.
Together, all hay harvested from
Pennsylvania’s 2 million acres
yielded 3.17 tons per acre on a dry
equivalent basis.
Hay and forage statistics are only
made possible by the farmers who
take the time to complete our sur
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tion helps us to generate timely,
accurate, and useful statistics in ser
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