EM007E Cost of Producing Alfalfa Hay Under Center Pivot Irrigation in the Columbia Basin of Washington State

Herbert Hinman, John Kugler, Kate Painter, and Phil Petersen

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Alfalfa hay is one of the most important agricultural crops grown in the Columbia Basin. The combined irrigated production of Adams, Benton, Franklin, Grant, and Yakima counties in 2006 totaled 1.6 million tons valued at greater than $205 million.

The enterprise budgets presented in this publication are based on alfalfa produced on irrigated land in the Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia Basin Project in south central Washington.The goal of this study was to develop enterprise budgets for production of both 1-ton and 80-lb (2-tie) alfalfa bales under two different assumptions: harvesting operations performed by custom operators and harvesting operations performed by owner-operators.

Photo: Marlin E. Rice, Iowa State University

Alfalfa net returns calculator

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In the spreadsheet version of this publication, an Excel-based cost calculator compares net returns for custom-based versus owner-operator harvesting. In addition, yields, prices, years of stand life, number of cuttings, and other parameters can be easily altered.