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New Forage Market Standards Needed

By Mike Rankin



At the 2014 California Alfalfa, Forage and Grain Symposium in Long Beach, Dan Putnam made a case to change the standards by which we evaluate and market hay. The University of California forage specialist has made this plea before. Not much has changed.

Putnam surmises the current systems of using either total digestible nutrients (TDN) or relative feed value (RFV) are effectively based on the amount of fiber in forage, acid detergent fiber (ADF) and/or neutral detergent fiber (NDF). Though the digestibility of fiber (NDFD) is often considered when feeding forage, it's rarely taken into account when forage gets priced or “graded” in the marketplace.

This problem has been recognized for a long time. It was one of the driving forces behind the development of relative forage quality (RFQ), which better measures feeding value to the animal and can be used across forage species. Its predecessor, RFV, was developed for and only intended for use on alfalfa, though many have incorrectly tried to extend its utility.

My personal experience with RFQ is that it's significantly better than RFV, especially for grasses. It also downgrades poor quality alfalfa and rewards top quality alfalfa more than RFV. In some years RFV and RFQ may be similar, others years (or cuttings) not so much. In addition to maturity, RFQ does a reasonable job of measuring environmental effects; for example, forage quality differences from growth under cool versus hot temperatures. Still, it’s not perfect and it certainly isn’t considered by nutritionists in the formulation of feed rations.

In addition to the fiber digestibility issue, there is also the matter of market hay grading based on forage analyses. USDA proposed their alfalfa system in 2003 and it is widely used in reporting hay markets. The highest quality scale for alfalfa is Supreme, which denotes forage greater than 185 RFV or 62 percent TDN.

There is also the grading scale that was developed by the American Forage and Grassland Council's hay quality task force nearly 30 years ago. In some areas of the U.S. this is still the scale of choice. Here the highest grade scale is Premium with an RFV/RFQ greater than 151. There is also a Premium grade in the USDA-developed system, but its quality parameters are 170 to 185 RFV. Houston . . . we (the forage industry) have a problem.

The issue of what to analyze and how the measurements can be incorporated into a fair market scale that fits the needs of regions, forage types and animal classes is not going to be an easy one to solve. Still, it shouldn't be impossible. The ideal system needs to be both simple and defendable. Further, there are new methods of analyses being developed with each passing year. Perhaps an analysis such as Dave Combs’ total tract NDF digestibility (TTNDFD) will someday be the answer. Putnam offered dry matter (DM), NDF, NDFD, crude protein (CP), and ash percentage as his preferred key analyses metrics, with NDF and NDFD given priority as marketing tools.

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Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”