A group of researchers from the College of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is launching a research to enhance worth discovery and market transparency in hay markets. These enhancements will assist create a extra environment friendly market and supply invaluable data that advantages consumers and sellers of hay.
Whereas hay constitutes a significant feed supply for a lot of livestock operations, market values for hay have not often been studied. Present analysis focuses on hay auctions; nevertheless, most hay produced within the U.S. just isn’t marketed by auctions. Somewhat it’s grown and consumed the identical farm or is offered by personal transactions, which implies no publicly out there transaction data is recorded.
This lack of hay market data helped immediate the most recent UTIA research, the place researchers will conduct experiments to find out what hay attributes are valued by consumers and the worth positioned on these attributes given a wide range of elements. Understanding the valued attributes may help present pointers to creating extra transparency, permitting producers to make extra knowledgeable buying and promoting choices.
“We count on this challenge will lead to consumers and sellers utilizing data reminiscent of bale weight and nutritive evaluation to find out the worth of hay reasonably than relying solely on visible attributes,” mentioned lead researcher Andrew Griffith, an affiliate professor within the division of agricultural and useful resource economics. “Hay consumers will profit by realizing the precise amount and nutritive worth of hay they’re buying, which in flip ought to help with managing livestock feed value and vitamin. Sellers can even profit by realizing the attributes hay consumers worth, to allow them to bundle and market their hay appropriately.”
Tennessee livestock producers alone averaged 143 days of feeding hay in 2017, which emphasizes the significance of hay on regional cattle operations.
“Whereas this analysis will affect operations of all sizes, it might probably have a pronounced affect on producers with small- and medium-sized operations who commerce comparatively small portions of hay and are much less accustomed to market dynamics and pricing,” mentioned Griffith.
The research will likely be performed by Andrew Griffith, Karen DeLong, Chris Boyer, Charley Martinez and Jon Walton, all from the division of agricultural and useful resource economics. The researchers are partnering with the Tennessee Cattlemen’s Affiliation and the Tennessee Division of Agriculture on this three-year grant research, funded by USDA’s Agricultural Advertising Service.
