While more acres of hay are harvested each year in Alabama than any other commodity, hay production is often overlooked as one of Alabama’s top crops. According to the Alabama Agricultural Statistics Service, 850,000 acres of hay were harvested in 2004, producing more than 2.7 million tons of hay. Perhaps more importantly, those square building blocks and large rolls drivers see scattered in fields along the roadside are vital to the state’s multimillion-dollar horse and cattle industries and help protect the environment.”Hay production is a central part of agriculture in Alabama, but it is often forgotten as a true commodity,” said Alabama Farmers Federation Hay and Forage Director Perry Mobley. “Its impact on our state’s economy should not be undervalued.”Hay has been a major crop in Alabama for about as long as cattle have been a major commodity in the state, Mobley said. And while there are a few large commercial producers, the vast majority of hay is still harvested by beef producers for their own use.”We run a beef cow-calf operation,” said Bill Collier, a beef and hay producer in Lee County. “Our main goal is to produce enough hay to feed our cattle, and then we sell any that is left over.”While the end use of most hay in the state has not changed, there have been many improvements in its production. Until the early 1970s, all hay in the state was baled as square bales. “I’ve lived long enough to see all the changes,” said Winford Parmer of Selma. “I remember my dad hiring someone to square bale our hay for a dime per bale in the late ’50s and early ’60s.”In 1972, the first round balers were introduced to the state when five farmers, including Parmer, ordered five Vermeer 605 balers. The balers were delivered to the farmers and assembled. According to Parmer, he had the honor of baling the first large round bale in the state of Alabama.Since then, round bales have become the main choice for most hay producers. Their size and shape make them easy to move by tractor and well suited for feeding several head of cattle at once. “I’ve seen mainly improvements on old technology,” said Don Ball, extension forage specialist at Auburn University. “I have not seen many revolutionary new designs with any lasting impact.”Some of the new pieces of equipment to come along are tedders to improve how hay dries and cures and rotary cutters to improve the efficiency when hay is cut. “Although we look for ways to reduce the amount of hay consumption in the cattle industry because of cost, we must continue to look at new and innovative ways to make hay production more efficient,” said Mobley.The addition of the stack wagon, or pop-up loader, helped to make the collection of square bales from the field more efficient.”We thought we were walking in high cotton when we bought our first hay wagon, which eliminated the use of three people in the field,” said Jefferson County hay producer Steve Bradley, who serves on the state Hay and Forage Committee. “The hay wagon allowed one person to go to the field, load hay, bring it back and dump it at the barn.”A more recent innovation has been the hay accumulator, a device that is pulled behind a square baler. The accumulator collects bales and places them together in sets of eight to 15, depending on the model. These sets of bales can then be picked up as one block by a special grapple.”With the accumulator system, I can have two guys load six loads of 630 bales by themselves in one day,” said David Rogers, chairman of the Federation’s Hay and Forage Crops Committee. “There is no way a crew of people could do that the old way. In two months, we’ll put up 60,000 bales with five or six guys. It would have taken a crew of 30 or 40 guys to do that in the old days.”Rogers and his father, Bob, run a hay operation in Cherokee County. Most of their hay is sold to be fed to horses. They market their hay in the Atlanta area, as well as around Birmingham and other parts of Alabama.Bradley and his son Brad, who currently use a pop-up loader, are looking to begin using a hay accumulator system in their operation. Like Rogers’ operation, the Bradleys sell some horse hay, but the majority of their production is in mulch hay for erosion control.”We got started producing mulch hay about four years ago,” said Brad Bradley. “We had some private individuals approach us that needed mulch hay. It looked like a good market to get into. It doesn’t matter when you cut it or if it was rain damaged. It gave us a year-round operation.”The Alabama Department of Environmental Management requires that any landscaping or construction site be reseeded with grass if it is going to be left idle for 13 days or longer. This means broadcasting grass seed and fertilizer over the area and covering with a spread of mulch hay.”With that kind of requirement, you can see why the demand is growing,” said Steve Bradley.Ball says although there is no known data to indicate it, demand for hay as an erosion control has greatly increased in recent years. “From the calls that I get about erosion control hay, the market seems to be booming,” said Ball. “I’ve gotten more calls about that in the last three or four years than in all the rest of my career.”While the demand for both horse hay and mulch hay is increasing, both are still only a small percentage of the state’s production. Ball noted that more beef producers are weighing whether it is still cost effective to produce their own hay. Such consideration is gaining more importance as fertilizer and fuel prices are on the rise and maintenance costs continue to increase.”Our biggest challenge in this day and time is the cost of producing hay,” said Parmer. “A lot of people don’t realize how much it costs to produce a bale of hay. It’s mind-boggling to see how much you have invested in one bale of hay. It actually scares me.””Just a few years ago a person could buy a 1,000-pound roll of hay for $20-25, and now that roll might cost $30-35,” said Mobley. “Hay producers just can’t produce hay for the cost that they used to. We will continue to see increases in consumption of hay by horse farms and environmental or erosion control companies, and we need to be committed to continue to look at hay as a renewable energy resource for bio-energy production. I think for these reasons we will continue to see hay production as the single largest crop in this state for some time to come.”