▶ 2026 Mid-Summer Alfalfa and Forage Update

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All right. 

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Appreciate that. 

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So the reason I have these slides from first cutting is I cannot believe that we 

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are in the second-half of August almost and the year just seems to have flown by. 

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However, the elephant in the room needs to be what 

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we’re currently dealing with, not just in the United States, 

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statewide as well. 

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And that is the huge drought issue. 

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We can certainly see to the West of us, the states that are affected. 

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And I want you to keep that in mind because we’re going to talk about alfalfa 

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not just from Wisconsin standpoint, but a national standpoint. 

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We’ll, we’ll definitely come back and take a 

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look at what’s happening in our own state as well. 

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One of the things I was asked to do was to provide an update and the best way for 

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me to do that was to reach out to my peers. 

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We have multiple regional crops and soils educators, 

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so I asked them a couple questions and they provided some responses to me. 

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We’ve got Scott Reuss up there in the Northwoods: Marinette, Langlade, Oconto, 

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Shawano. Jerry Clark: Chippewa, Dunn, Eau Claire. Anastasia Kurth: Juneau, Sauk, 

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Richland. Jordyn Sattler: Grant, Iowa, Lafayette and Green and then myself with 

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Outagamie and Winnebago. 

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So the report from the northeast part of the state is basically that things are 

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moderate and variable as it relates to the alfalfa yields. 

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First crop was average, later cuttings were were significantly 

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drier, second was more variable as they already 

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had dry zones developing up there in the northeast. 

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Shawano will remain fairly good yet, which shows you how it’s not doesn’t take 

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a tremendous distance for conditions to vary from one county to the other. 

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And Marinette, they possibly aren’t going to have a 

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third crop due to insufficient return to the harvesting cost. 

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So that is a situation where folks have been suffering drought for extended 

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periods here are going to have to make a decision about whether it’s worth it to 

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take that cutting. 

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How do things look going into the home stretch? 

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Well, the good news is like many places, there’s probably enough alfalfa up in the 

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region. 

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You may have some farm to farm sales to redistribute that hay. 

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But the lack of rain is really becoming burdensome, 

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burdensome as far as corn silage yield and quality potential and Marinette and 

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other portions up there in the northwest portion. 

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So these are photos that Scott sent me. 

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The left is Crivitz on July 15th and the right is Beaver Township on August 2026 

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And you can clearly see the impact of drought. 

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Now, this does not represent the whole parts 

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of the counties, but I think it’s safe to say that we have 

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people who would have been banking on this producing an average corn silage 

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yield and it’s anything but. 

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We’re going to move to the West side of the state. 

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Jerry Clark covering Chippewa, Dunn, Eau Claire. 

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Jerry indicated that when it comes to alfalfa, yields were average here, 

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not a lot of potato leaf hopper pressure, some on 3rd crop who extended the cutting 

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window, but otherwise averaging 1. 2 ton per acre so far and those four cut 

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systems. 

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So we should be on target. 

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Spotty rain, 1/4 inch, third of an inch rain, 

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really limp things along. 

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Irrigators are running through freshly harvested alfalfa fields and lots of it 

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needed for all crops. 

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So the quality’s been excellent as there have been extended windows to get it 

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harvested. 

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So over in Outagamie Winnebago, we do not see this. 

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We have tiling, we do not have irrigation. 

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But take a look at the difference in these fields and what you have from 

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harvest to just being irrigated and having a good 7-10 days there of proper 

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temperatures and precipitation to go with. 

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Jerry sent me this one this morning. 

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And the question is, can you tell the difference in the upper 

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left hand corner between the irrigated field and the field that’s not irrigated? 

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I think pictures worth 1000 words and you can can see that there. 

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So from Grant, Green, Iowa, Lafayette County, 

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Jordyn Sattler indicated most of people in her area are planning to start 

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chopping corn silage in a couple of weeks. 

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They already had a grower chop a load yesterday. 

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It was on sandy ground pretty burnt up 66% moisture. 

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So for those really drought stressed areas, 

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monitoring whole plant moisture is going to be absolutely essential. 

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That’s an isolated case, but nonetheless those those places down 

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South are much further along than we are up north. 

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So it is silage season down there and it might start early. 

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3rd crop yield look decent that don’t have the numbers to back it up quite yet, 

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but it seemed like it took a long time to regrow after that with the how dry it is. 

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So 4th crop will possibly be starting this weekend. 

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Last but not least as far as Anastasia, Juneau, Sauk and Richland. 

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The remember these comments were asked for ahead of time. 

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So when we looked at the drought map, it is worse in her in her area a few days 

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ago week ago it was on the edge of DO drought D0 drought but no one is in panic 

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mode. 

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The the recent rains kept everything workable, 

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but alfalfa has had about 3 inches of rain total since that third cutting date 

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in July. 

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So some minor hopper burn damage to the crop. 

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First yield was really good at 2 tons of dry matter and the second third cuttings 

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were over a ton. 

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So no silage issues to report. 

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And I’ll qualify that by saying yet because of conditions possibly changing. 

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And this is important to note as well. 

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And this is why I appreciate input from my peers. 

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Grower contacted her early in the week and with the last round of rain concerns 

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the nitrate levels and some sorghum Sudan that he planned. 

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To green chop was on sandy ground northern Juneau County, 

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and some leaves were already drying up. 

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So on nitrate levels may be something that we need to look at, 

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not just in these green chop feeds, but our silage as a whole. 

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So in order to talk about economics and highlight pricing and stuff, 

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we got to take a look at the macro picture here. 

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So what I’m showing you here is the United States, 

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and you see Wisconsin and dark blue, Texas and dark blue, 

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California and dark blue. 

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Those are the top 3 total forage productions in the state. 

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And just like the Packers, Wisconsin is #1 Texas is number two 

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overall forage production. 

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California comes in at #3 when we take a look at this as far as our silage yields 

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across the United States, other hay, alfalfa, you can see them there 21.8. 

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Other hay is going to be lower in alfalfa 2.1, alfalfa 3.4, green chop 7. 

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6 and sorghum Sudan 16. 7 or I should say sorghum and or sorghum 

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Sudan. 

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But you can see how that breaks out across the country. 

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For the alfalfa portion of this, we’re just going to focus on the blue 

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number and the red number. 

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So the blue number for alfalfa is the total production that we see in that 

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state. 

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And then the next number is going to be the ranking for alfalfa acres. 

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So we’re not going to have time to go through all these other ones. 

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And I want to highlight this with with alfalfa. 

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So alfalfa total production was up . 03% in 2025 over 2024. 

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Acreage was no change at basically 14,000, 000 acres. 

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And if you do the math of 3 1/2 tons an acre, that math works out between 14,000, 

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000 acres and 49 million tons of feed. 

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As far as Wisconsin is concerned right now, this past year, 2025, 

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even though we ranked number one in forage, 

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we are #8 for both production and acreage. 

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And when we take a look at just the other hay and alfalfa, 

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you can see there is more other hay across the entire United States than 

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there is alfalfa. 

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And that shouldn’t surprise us because of some of the geography down South and them 

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not being able to use alfalfa in all those situations. 

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So when we take a look at the top alfalfa producing states as far as 2025, 

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you’ll notice we’ve got Iowa, we’ve got Nebraska, 

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we’ve got South Dakota, we’ve got Montana, Idaho. 

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That’s one that people are somewhat surprised. 

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But when you look at the dairy industry that you’ve also got California in there. 

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So as far as total other hay production, again as indicated as we move South, 

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they’re going to make use of some other grasses in the mixtures. 

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And so alfalfa isn’t going to be the lead one there. 

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Look at this and see how our alfalfa production has basically declined as far 

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as where we’re at when we talk about basically in 2020, 

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in 2005 so 20 years ago, we were looking at 16,000, 

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000 acres in of alfalfa, almost 17 million in the entire United 

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States. 

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We are down to just slightly over 10. 

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So while it hasn’t been a complete steady decline, you can see we had some bumps. 

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2014, 2015, we are in a downward trend. 

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When we take a look at alfalfa hay and haylage in Wisconsin and what’s been 

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harvested. 

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This is a 25 year span. 

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Here you can see 2. 6 million acres in the year 2000 and we 

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hit a low of half that 1.3 in 2023, but we’ve rebounded to 1 1/2 million 

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acres, but still significant, significantly less than where we were 

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just not too long ago. 

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When we take a look at prices here, you can see just like inflation, 

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alfalfa has been in a general upward trend. 

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And what we’re going to do is we’re going to pick out that 2016 to 2026 area 

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because if you were to take a corn or soybean price chart for that decade there, 

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guess what? 

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It’s basically going to be the same curve when other commodities are high, 

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alfalfa is competing for acreage, which means our price is usually higher. 

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When we take a look at the National Ag Statistics Service for 2026, 

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the first six months have been reported. 

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Look at the uptick this spring. 

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We started lower with alfalfa, but as drought developed in all those 

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alfalfa producing states 

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You can see what’s happened to price, not just in the US, 

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but here in the States. 

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This is a graph from Progressive Forage. 

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And I thought this was important to share just because when we talk about the 

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alfalfa 151 and higher, that’s our our peak category typically 

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with the hay report that extension puts out. 

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But we do have that premium dairy category, which is 170 to 185. 

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And then we have Supreme which is 185 and higher, 

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even though those prices went down because we had record production years in 

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2024 and 2025 in Wisconsin. 

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And please note this, these red bars take into account 

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California, Idaho, New York, Texas and Wisconsin which are the five 

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largest milk producing states. 

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But see what happens. 

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The price does decrease, but notice that it does not drop below 

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$200. 

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And here’s the statement that good hay is always worth something, no matter supply. 

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I’m a trust but verify person. 

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I’ve heard that known that 27 years. 

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I’ve been listening to it and and preaching it. 

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Here are the numbers. 

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Even though we have had two record hay years in Wisconsin 24-25, 

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the price hasn’t dropped below $200 a ton. 

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Again, focus on high quality hay and you’ll 

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always have a market. 

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Here is the Upper Midwest report that Extension and Melissa puts out. 

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And you can see we’ve been on a general uptrend. 

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It was scary back on March 31st when I saw large squares of 151 for going for $1. 

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06 a ton. 

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And I told myself there’s no way that’s going to last. 

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We can’t afford to grow and produce hay and market it at that price. 

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And sure enough, other factors come into play as far as 

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drought and other things. 

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And you can see what’s happened to our prices there. 

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Here is a concern and this is a real life example that I was dealing with. 

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I had a farmer call me, they had purchased some second crop 

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alfalfa way past maturity, 111 RFV, 103 RFQ. 

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And you can see what I try to do is take the three most recent prices, 

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but people aren’t even taking low quality hay to the auction market. 

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As you can see on July 21st, there was no sale. 

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So what I did is took the August 4th, the July 7th and I went all the way back 

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to June. 

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And when you go back to June, then people were still willing to pay 3 

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digits for our lowest quality hay. 

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Not anymore. 

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So we averaged out at $82. 67 for 15% moisture. 

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Figured out the price per dry ton at $97. 26. 

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There were 64 bales harvested 710 lbs each. 

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It was at 18% moisture because it was a big square. 

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Baler 

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We had 45,440 lbs divided by tons, 22. 72 tons at 18%. 

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We do the conversion for dry matter there. 

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22 tons wet at 18% converts down to 18. 6 tons of dry matter. 

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We multiply that price out and we get 1800 and basically $12. 

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00 total value of hay. 

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Well, in this case the farmer had to bale the 

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hay, The farmer had to rake half of it. 

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So the baling was at $10.50 a bale, which was their price. 

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The raking was at $9.50. 

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They did 1/2. 

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So I this was a 17 acre field by the way. 

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So half of the 17 acres, the person who bought the hay did all the 

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cutting at $17.00 an acre. 

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And so by time you subtract all those costs, 

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we typically say half the value in hay is tied up in making it well look at the 

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expense versus what the worth is. 

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We only have $770. 25 left after that example. 

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Now that was poor quality second crop. 

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We’re on the cusp of high quality 4th crop coming off and people are going to 

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ask what is it worth if we go to the top. 

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You can see I used a hay price of $200 just because that’s where we’ve averaged 

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here, here lately. 

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And I’m using 15% dry matter if it was stored hay, 

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maybe 13% in at the beginning of spring after being stored all winter. 

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But we’re using 15% here. 

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We do the conversions if we have 4 tons harvested on average. 4 1/2, 5 tons, 

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5 1/2. 

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You can see those numbers on the left hand side. 

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This chart is nice because it tells you in a 4 ton season yield we should get 

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just under 3/4 ton of dry matter alfalfa and it would be worth $50 a ton if our 

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harvesting costs were or $49-50 a ton if our harvesting costs were $95. 

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If we had a little higher yielding field . 81 ton 67.98. 

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You can read from there, but this gives you an idea where the 

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market will be as we enter forth cutting here. 

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As far as our alfalfa dry matter, this would mirror basically the chart 

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that Mike Bertram puts together for the WAYP. 

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We’ve had our ups and downs and we finished on the positive side. 

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So I’m going to go back basically and show you here is where the top producing 

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alfalfa states are. 

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South Dakota rains number one in acreage in total production #1 and #1. 

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Idaho is number 2 in production. 

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Nebraska #3 California #4 Montana #5 And as I mentioned earlier, 

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Wisconsin #8 North Dakota I throw in just because they’re #3 in acreage. 

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So that’s worth noting. 

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However, if we take a look at 2024, look at that, Wisconsin was dark blue. 

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So we were one of those top alfalfa producing states, 

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but we’ve been edged out here recently. 

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Back in 2024, Idaho was #1 Idaho number one in 

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production. 

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Nebraska #2, South Dakota #3 And look at that, 

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Wisconsin was #6 So those numbers I showed you in those charts and thinking 

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about economics, this all comes into play. 

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I already mentioned the Alfalfa Yield and Persistence Project, 

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and we’ve got people out there collecting samples right now, 

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so we’ll have great data for that. 

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I couldn’t resist taking this photo. 

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Someone needs to practice their tractor driving skills because if it was a 

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drought early in the season, you would not see that much hay left 

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missed out in the field. 

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And the other thing is get that hay off the field within 48 hours if you can, 

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because if you have to go back, you can see the damage that that wheel 

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traffic causes. 

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It’s real. 

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I’m not sure which is worse, leaving it there or wrecking it 

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afterwards. 

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Lots of waterhemp we’re seeing in some of these alfalfa fields. 

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So what I did is I went to a field, grabbed a pure alfalfa sample, 

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grabbed a moderate sample with waterhemp and alfalfa. 

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This was second cutting new seating alfalfa in Outagamie County and then the 

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third bar the red one was it was more waterhemp by weight than alfalfa, 

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so it was thick. 

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When we take a look at what happens is our dry matter goes down as we add 

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waterhemp because it’s so succulent, so our moisture increases. 

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You can see going from 26 dry matter down to 15 moisture, meaning 85%. 

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Whereas alfalfa straight was about 73-74% moisture. 

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Crude protein, a light amount of waterhemp. 

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Doesn’t knock your protein. 

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We’re basically the same. 

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They’re 17 and 18. 

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But when you get into the heavy, it makes sense your protein’s going to 

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drop. ADF and NDF as you had the heavier 

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waterhemp, it makes sense your fiber is going to go 

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up. 

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But how many people were aware of this? 

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As you harvest that waterhemp, it adds to the NDFD 30 fiber 

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digestibility. 

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And you can see that prominently in that heavy stand. 

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Who would have thought that water hemp was that digestible? 

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And because RFQ is based on basically digestibility, 

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you can see where when it comes to relative feed value, 

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we’d rather have the pure alfalfa or the slight waterhemp, moderate waterhemp. 

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But when it comes to RFQ, because of that digestibility advantage, 

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we actually have higher RFQ with the waterhemp infested areas. 

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So again, like so many other things, I’m just driving around thinking it’s an 

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observation. 

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Here’s another one. 

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The agricultural economy as a whole, if it’s not broke, we don’t fix it. 

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You can see that this is one way to maybe not have tire track track damage in 

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alfalfa fields. 

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I’m not recommending we’ve run equipment till it’s bare like that, 

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but that’s what’s out across the countryside. 

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We need to consider the value of the hay that’s lost when we don’t store it. 

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Here you can see those round bales obviously stored outdoors as opposed to 

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large squares under a structure. 

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Very important to space those bales out to allow them to breathe. 

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When we take about take a look at outside round bales and everybody has a lot of 

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hay for the most part from carryover. 

18:59 -> 19:03 
So if they’re just round baling and leaving it out in the field, 

19:03 -> 19:09 
important to remind them that that outer 6 inches in a 66 inch diameter bale, 

19:09 -> 19:12 
which would basically be a 5 1/2 foot diameter, 

19:12 -> 19:18 
you’re losing 1/3 of your dry matter in that feed and you go another 6 inches and 

19:18 -> 19:20 
now you’re pushing 60%. 

19:20 -> 19:22 
So you’re losing over half of it. 

19:22 -> 19:26 
So again, conversations to have no one has money 

19:26 -> 19:28 
right now to spend on new storage. 

19:28 -> 19:33 
But I needed to show you when you look at under roof losses, they’re negligible, 

19:33 -> 19:34 
2 to 10%. 

19:34 -> 19:38 
When you make your way down the chart, if you do anything at all to improve your 

19:38 -> 19:40 
situation, yes, you’re in the double digits, 

19:40 -> 19:42 
but at least it’s not as bad as it could be. 

19:42 -> 19:47 
When you’re outside and you’re looking at covered on ground, 

19:47 -> 19:51 
you’re up to 46% losses uncovered on ground up to 61. 

19:51 -> 19:55 
Hard to make that hay and watch it go to waste in that regard. 

19:55 -> 19:59 
This just so it shows the larger the diameter of, or excuse me, 

19:59 -> 20:01 
the smaller diameter bale. 

20:01 -> 20:04 
If you have 4 inches bad, you’re going to have almost a third of it 

20:04 -> 20:07 
lost, a quarter lost, and then a fifth of it lost on 4, 

20:07 -> 20:08 
5 and 6 foot bales. 

20:09 -> 20:13 
One thing we always will be #1 and it’s a green chop and more green choppers per 

20:13 -> 20:16 
capita in Wisconsin than anywhere else. 

20:16 -> 20:17 
Let’s talk about corn silage. 

20:17 -> 20:19 
Something to note on that level. 

20:19 -> 20:20 
Can we interrupt you real quick? 

20:20 -> 20:22 
Yep, 5 minutes. 

20:22 -> 20:23 
Perfect, thank you. 

20:23 -> 20:27 
As far as corn silage that you can notice that last stock was a later merger and 

20:27 -> 20:31 
it’s not going to produce the ears that we see on the right hand side here. 

20:31 -> 20:36 
So total United States corn production Wisconsin is #1 definitively, 

20:36 -> 20:39 
we don’t have to talk about other states. 

20:39 -> 20:41 
BMR is an issue that it’s going away. 

20:41 -> 20:45 
And here on the left hand side, you can see a plot with short corn in it. 

20:45 -> 20:50 
If you look at that center you can also see the farmer planted 3 different hybrid 

20:50 -> 20:53 
6 rows each as you make your way from the left to the right. 

20:53 -> 20:56 
There from that short roll and you can see a photo in the field. 

20:56 -> 20:58 
UW has BMR research plots. 

20:58 -> 21:00 
This is one in Seymour, WI. 

21:00 -> 21:05 
Scott Reuss has one up in Oconto County and Doctor Kaur has one down in Madison. 

21:05 -> 21:06 
Problem with corn silage? 

21:06 -> 21:10 
What we really need to pay attention to is what’s going to happen with our 

21:10 -> 21:11 
disease development here. 

21:11 -> 21:14 
So you can see in Wisconsin, we have tar spot here. 

21:14 -> 21:17 
Tar spot identification has been talked about before. 

21:17 -> 21:20 
There’s going to be some links that you can go to that are shared in the chat. 

21:21 -> 21:25 
As far as tar spot, 60 to 74° is what it’s looking for for 

21:25 -> 21:27 
development moisture, our key drivers. 

21:27 -> 21:32 
I’m not going to read through all these points because I think that we know the 

21:32 -> 21:36 
wetter it is that’s going to increase those those chances. 

21:36 -> 21:39 
Yield losses are highly variable, you know, 

21:39 -> 21:41 
especially if the disease develops late. 

21:41 -> 21:44 
After R4/R5, yield impacts are often minimal, 

21:44 -> 21:49 
but before that, that R1/R3, we can end up with some significant 

21:49 -> 21:51 
losses, 10 to 30% or upwards of 50. 

21:51 -> 21:56 
Here’s a great chart with the R stages on that can help you determine if you should 

21:56 -> 21:58 
treat. R4 is the cut off. 

21:58 -> 22:02 
You have to decide 50-50 depending on the amount of pressure that’s there. 

22:02 -> 22:05 
Southern rust, that’s a new issue that we’re dealing 

22:05 -> 22:05 
with as well. 

22:05 -> 22:08 
And you can see we’ve got that present in Wisconsin counties. 

22:08 -> 22:11 
Everybody got introduced to this last year here. 

22:11 -> 22:14 
You can see the identifying characteristics and we’ve got links in 

22:14 -> 22:15 
the chat to go there. 

22:16 -> 22:17 
Again, same thing. 

22:17 -> 22:22 
We’re applying those fungicides R1 to R3, and at least in the northern half of the 

22:22 -> 22:24 
state, we still have corn in those categories. 

22:25 -> 22:26 
Things you should consider. 

22:26 -> 22:31 
It’s good at protecting uninfected areas, but you really need to consider that 

22:31 -> 22:32 
stage of development. 

22:32 -> 22:36 
So we want you to study this chart here and make sure that you’re staging that 

22:36 -> 22:36 
corn directly. 

22:36 -> 22:40 
When it comes to spray decisions, we’ve got a great table that’s put 

22:40 -> 22:44 
together by the Crop Protection Management Network and you can see a 

22:44 -> 22:46 
resource there rating those fungicide products. 

22:47 -> 22:51 
Here is light southern rust versus heavy at a dry down I did last year. 

22:51 -> 22:53 
Light on the left, heavy on the right. 

22:53 -> 22:54 
Here you can see the two plants. 

22:54 -> 22:58 
Notice on the left hand plant, it’s green all the way down to the stock. 

22:58 -> 23:02 
Look at the right plant, side plant we’ve got dry all the way up. 

23:02 -> 23:05 
We had 14 rows of corn on the better looking plant, 

23:05 -> 23:08 
12 rows of kernels on the lesser plant. 

23:08 -> 23:13 
So there’s obviously stress at V6 and that probably made it more susceptible to 

23:13 -> 23:13 
disease. 

23:13 -> 23:15 
How much does it impact dry down rates? 

23:16 -> 23:19 
The heavy rust plant was at 63.1. 

23:19 -> 23:21 
The light rust was 66.6. 

23:21 -> 23:24 
You may think only 3 1/2 points of moisture isn’t much, 

23:24 -> 23:29 
but we went from 66 where we have multiple choices of structures to ensile 

23:29 -> 23:32 
to 63 where we probably missed our point real quickly. 

23:32 -> 23:35 
We’ll talk about crop corn enterprise budget. 

23:35 -> 23:40 
Basically if we have 21 tons, we’re going to have $45.00 a ton, 

23:40 -> 23:41 
$945 Here. 

23:41 -> 23:45 
We’ve got accounted for our nitrogen, our P2O5, 

23:45 -> 23:49 
our potassium and our total inputs there are $339. 

23:49 -> 23:52 
We’ve got our cost for the corn seed in this budget. 

23:52 -> 23:54 
I’m not going to go through all these individually. 

23:54 -> 23:56 
We’ve got spray accounted for there. 

23:56 -> 24:00 
We’ve got our land rental cost in their crop insurance. 

24:00 -> 24:05 
And when we take a look at harvesting, we’ve got that account or excuse me, 

24:05 -> 24:08 
putting the crop in, we’ve got that accounted for as well as 

24:08 -> 24:10 
the harvesting $225 per acre there. 

24:11 -> 24:16 
And when we look at storing bags are accounted for along with laborers, 

24:16 -> 24:17 
laborers and other items. 

24:17 -> 24:21 
And what we see is raising corn is not corn silage is not profitable. 

24:21 -> 24:27 
We’re losing about 477 per acre and we have a break even cost of 6776. 

24:28 -> 24:33 
So what I’m going to say is that we have spreadsheets available from Orion Sterry. 

24:33 -> 24:37 
Matt Lippert wrote some articles on pricing corn silage and those should be 

24:37 -> 24:39 
available to you in the links and the chat. 

24:39 -> 24:42 
So it’s going to be individual situations here. 

24:43 -> 24:44 
Here’s the sensitivity analysis. 

24:44 -> 24:48 
Even if we improved our price by 20% and our yield by 20%, 

24:48 -> 24:53 
which would be that upper right corner of that sensitivity chart, 

24:53 -> 24:55 
we’re still losing $62.00. 

24:55 -> 24:59 
So pricing corn silage, I recommend that farmers look at what 

24:59 -> 25:02 
they have tied up in the crop before A signing, 

25:02 -> 25:05 
a value of what it is when it goes out the door. 

25:05 -> 25:08 
And so with that, I should be done here. 

25:08 -> 25:10 
I’m going to stop. 

25:10 -> 25:16 
Anybody who would like to talk to me can reach me at kevin.jarek@whisk.edu. 

25:16 -> 25:19 
If we have any questions, I’ll try and answer those quickly. 

25:21 -> 25:29 
I’m going to go ahead and let us transition to the next presenter.