2014 Idaho Hay Prices Hinge On Water

Jan 08, 2014

Idaho alfalfa hay prices will rise or fall in 2014 based largely on how much irrigation water will be available during the growing season, says Glenn Shewmaker, forage specialist with University of Idaho Extension.

“Right now, a lot of our reservoirs are empty or nearly empty,” he notes. “If we don’t get near- or above-normal precipitation this winter and spring and the serious drought continues, hay prices could take off. There just isn’t going to be much hay available.”

A bump up in alfalfa acreage this year wouldn’t surprise Shewmaker now that corn and wheat prices have moved lower. “It could lead more growers to alfalfa. The price for it has softened some in recent months, but it hasn’t nosedived like the corn price has.”

At the very least, a continuing drought would convince some growers to leave existing alfalfa stands in place for another year. “And a lot of growers see alfalfa as a drought insurance crop. The key is whether they can get adequate water to get it established.”

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.