OUTLOOK, Sask. – Saskatchewan producers grow approximately 7,000 acres of timothy, but Korvin Olfert says there’s easily room for that acreage to double.
“We’ve sort of been stuck at that 7,000 acres for a little while,” said Olfert, an agrologist with the Irrigation Crop Diversification Corp. in Swift Current, Sask.
“I don’t think we’re going to get big new acres from existing growers. I think we’re looking for new people to come into the industry.”
So what’s holding producers back from growing this potentially profitable crop?
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“There’s a lot of irrigation acres out there that would warrant growing timothy,” B.J. Boot of Boot Hay Producers told a recent timothy production seminar in Outlook.
“Some of the problems we run into are the age of the farmers. They’re just not willing to switch gears at their age. It takes a fair bit of labour in the summertime. Cuts into fishing.”
Timothy grows at the whim of the weather. It needs to be crimped and reconditioned after rain to shake moisture out of swaths. The timothy harvest is time sensitive because weathering quickly downgrades quality.
However, Boot said the time investment isn’t the only obstacle.
“I think the biggest one is the sheer capital investment.”
He said people are willing to invest in the different types of equipment timothy requires, but only if they are young enough.
Baling the crop requires a large square baler. Round bales, which are more popular and require less expensive machinery, are not conducive to timothy processing.
A large square baler can cost more than $100,000.
“There are some processors in Alberta that will take round bales, but they convert them back to square – unroll them and rebale them in squares,” said Greg Sommerfeld of Elcan-Sommergreen Forages in Broderick, Sask.
“It’s just another step in the process and there’s product loss and degradation.”
A farmer at the seminar who is considering growing timothy next year said producers with only a few acres can’t afford all the equipment.
“Even if you pool with other growers and use their equipment, it’s such a time-sensitive harvest. Who gets priority?”
Timothy is also an uninsurable crop. The risks of yield and quality loss are compounded by the weather, making it a risky venture.
“There’s a certain amount of shrink factor out there every time it rains and you’re working your swath,” Boot said. “You actually are not just losing quality, you’re losing quantity as well. It snowballs.”
One producer said more farmers would grow timothy or expand their acres if it was an insured crop.
“Crop insurance is a big one,” said Jerry Eliason, a timothy producer from Broderick. “There is too much cash going in for the risk coming back.”
Dale Wotherspoon, a Saskatchewan Crop Insurance analyst in Melville, Sask., attended the seminar to discuss adding timothy to a new crop insurance program. He said a new crop has to be economically viable to qualify for insurance.
“Timothy definitely fits that criteria.”
The first step to insuring a new crop, he added, is to collect information on growth characteristics, yield, quality, market price and risk factors such as weather and pests.
Premium rates would be based on the risk of achieving average production determined by long-term data collection. The necessary information would come from the industry.
“The big one here is producer involvement. We want to work with the producer to find out the key components of the business. What risk factors are you exposed to?”
He said the trickiest part of the program is not having a lot of experience with timothy. Because of the learning curve on new crops, crop insurance operates a separate fund. Chickpeas, caraway, coriander and dryland dry beans are a few of the crops that have been insured since the program began in 1998.
However, Wotherspoon was skeptical the program would be in place in time for next spring.
