| The experience of Michigan farmers illustrates the dilemma faced by hay growers: while hay production has received a great deal of attention, hay marketing has been neglected. Supplies of high quality hay can be expanded within the span of a single growing season, but the marketing system generates prices which do not always clear the market and which do not serve as accurate signals to guide planning decisions. More fundamentally, there are no effective market mechanisms to generate those prices, to match buyers and sellers, or to move hay cheaply from surplus to deficit regions. Clearly, this is not because hay is a minor crop. In Michigan, hay is the second largest crop grown on a per acre basis. Apart from the direct economic value of hay, it has... |
