RUSSELL, Man. – In Garry Halwas’s field of dreams, there is one crop standing above all others.
Halwas owns and manages Sunridge Forage Ltd., a company that exports compressed timothy hay to markets in Japan and Korea.
Finding buyers for the compressed hay is never a problem, said Halwas during a tour of the Sunridge plant near Russell.
The challenge, he said, is convincing more farmers in his western Manitoba region to grow timothy for the export market.
“It’s going to be a problem for quite some time as far as we can figure out.”
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Most of the hay exported by Sunridge Forage goes to Asia, where it gets fed to cattle, mainly dairy herds. The main buyer is Japan although markets are developing in South Korea.
The Sunridge plant near Russell could handle 40,000 tonnes of timothy hay a year.
Halwas expects the plant this year will process 12,000-15,000 tonnes, provided wet weather doesn’t reduce the volume of hay suited for export.
The region around Russell is well suited for timothy hay, said Pam Iwanchysko, a provincial forage production specialist. The region’s soils and abundant moisture favor the crop.
But not all producers are willing to view hay in the same way they do wheat and canola. There is often more willingness to invest $200,000 in a combine than to spend $50,000 on a baler.
Iwanchysko is among those trying to change that mindset.
“Producers have to start treating (timothy hay) as a crop and not just a forage,” she said.
Progress has been made.
Sunridge Forage was started in 1997 with 1,200 tonnes of hay processed that year. There were 800 acres of production and growers were paid an average of $90 tonne. A typical yield is more than two tonnes per acre.
The volume of hay processed at Russell and the average selling price have both increased in the past two years.
Last year, 7,800 tonnes of timothy hay were processed at the Sunridge plant. The hay was drawn from 4,000 acres of production, with producers getting paid an average of $115 tonne.
This year there could be as many as 6,000 acres supplying hay for the plant.
“The consumers in Japan are very happy with the hay we’re shipping out of Manitoba,” Halwas said. “The future looks bright.”
Not all the timothy hay grown for the plant will have the quality needed for export to Japan.
Japanese buyers look to the hay mainly as a source of fibre for dairy herds.
For them, the color is more important than protein content or the length of heads on the timothy. The Japanese want timothy hay that is celery green.
Of the 4,000 acres grown last year in the Russell area, just over a third of that produced premium quality hay for the export market.
Hay that does not meet the grades needed for export still finds a market, but at a lower price. Those markets include beef farms, feedlots and producers of pregnant mare’s urine in Manitoba.
“The PMU farmers certainly like it,” said Halwas, who has been growing timothy hay for 11 years. “It makes excellent quality hay.”
Manitoba and Alberta are both in the export market for timothy hay.
The varieties grown in the Russell area include Botnia II, Climax and Drummond.
Those varieties produce long heads and are high yielding. They also give growers a mix of early and late-maturing plants, which provides a longer window for harvesting.
