The 2016 growing season left Iowa with an overabundance of poor quality hay and a market that continues a slide in 2017. The downward spiral of hay prices began in 2015 and continued through 2016, and has already shown the same trend in early 2017 with hay prices down at least 20 percent from a year ago.

Stan Yoder at Yoder Auction Service in Frytown, which has a hay auction once a week, reports that in 2015 they sold good dairy quality hay at $325 during its highest point for a 1,250 pound bale. A year ago the...