Kittitas Valley hay a hit overseas

ELLENSBURG – On a recent summer morning, a sales manager from Japan and his assistant were driven to a 1,100-acre hay farm about three miles southeast of town.

They had flown into Seattle a few days earlier. At this particular farm, the sales manager, Kenny Miura, of Yoshi International out of Tokyo, went inside a massive barn stacked 20 feet high with bales of timothy hay.

Timothy is the hay that is predominantly grown in the Kittitas Valley.

Miura pulled some of the hay out of a bale and quickly gave it a grade – in this case, what amounts to about a “C.”

“It has a little bit of bluegrass in it,” he said.

To the surprise of many who don’t live here, 90 percent of the timothy grown in the valley will never be eaten by an American horse or cow.

The closest locals will get to it is when a hay truck goes by, or motorists see stacks covered with vinyl tarps in fields alongside Interstate 90.

Nearly all of the timothy from here is shipped by sea to Japan and, in lesser amounts, to countries such as South Korea and China, and also the United Arab Emirates.

It means $35 million to $38 million is paid to the farmers, and an additional $80 million or so pumped into the economy as the farmers then spend money on everything from equipment to labor, according to the Kittitas County Chamber of Commerce.

At a time when some wonder what the United States can export other than movies and video games, the exporting of timothy hay is an amazing success story.

Horse and dairy-cow owners in this state do buy some of the timothy, but for the most part, they’re priced out. Farmers can get $180 to $320 a ton from export sales, broker Rollie Bernth said.

Selling timothy hay for export is profitable, but it does have its own idiosyncrasies. Buyers generally focus on how green the timothy is, not its nutritional value.

The grading criteria for timothy used by a buyer such as Miura is formidable, and, to an observer, perplexing.

There are Super Premium Horse, Premium Horse and No. 1 Horse grades. There are Super Premium Dairy, Premium Dairy, No. 1A Dairy, No. 1B Dairy, No. 1.5 Dairy and No. 2 Dairy.

The differences in grading are because of the presence of bluegrass in the hay, or the length of the seed head, or the thickness of the stems.

“It’s almost purely aesthetic,” says John Kugler, a retired educator with Washington State University’s Grant/Adams County extension, who has researched timothy hay. “It’s the visual aspect, just like people want to buy potatoes that don’t have scabs on them.”

But the grade is what affects the price. That is why timothy growers fear rain, which bleaches out the green.

Kugler says a little rain, and a little bit of bleaching, don’t reduce the nutritional value of the timothy.

But as they say here, it’s not the horse writing the check, but the owner.