Going Haywire in a Global Economy

Much of the hay cut in local fields this summer was bailed up not for neighbors with livestock and farm animals. Instead, those with farm animals had to eat it: no, they didn’t eat the hay, they ate the consequences of a global market that snatched up the bails and shipped them off to the orient. Fields that once fed local animals cashed in on global prices. The buyers- mainly Japanese and Korean- were interested in high quality hay grown without genetic modification. This year, Montana fit the bill.
Rumor has it that 100 semi-truck loads of hay left St. Ignatius in the middle of the night and convoyed their way to Pacific ports in the Seattle area in the beginning of October. Those with connections didn’t suffer. Like any successful business ploy, the growers/ ranch owners in the know simply kept their mouths shut and provided small quantities of hay to their cronies whilst keeping an adequate stash for themselves. Meanwhile, the many area residents with just enough farm land to house a few horses or other livestock were left scrambling for hay.
The price of hay doubled, jumping from an average of $85 a ton to $170 a ton. Hay from Canada and eastern Montana replaced the hay that was once so accessible: product that was once provided in the local marketplace was now being exported out of the area. Resource that was once manufactured (and in this case grown) was now being exported elsewhere. Hay buyers in the Flathead, Lake, Sanders and Lincoln counties were now competing with buyers from Japan and Korea in a global marketplace.

Japan and Korea are getting the better deal: the dollar’s value decreasing increases export potential. And more overseas buyers receive a better product- in this case a Montana one- at our expense. Not only does the cost of hay double while the dollar is weak (making other nations’ currency stronger), but the quality of the hay can be dubious. For the most part, Canadian hay growers still grow “clean” hay, as do farmers in Montana. Yet sometimes, the “clean” hay, grown without genetic modification gets replaced with a genetically engineered substitute, as was found at the Kalispell Cenex. Labeled as “weed free”, the hay was marketed as superior to the buyer. The telling sign, however, was how animals poked noses at the hay uninterested, looking around for the real hay to show up.
The real hay is being fed overseas (again- Japan and Korea) where governments continue to resist pressures from agribusiness and buyers are privy to the unproven safeness of genetically engineered product. They won’t accept any feed into their countries that is genetically modified; be it for animal or human consumption. And in Europe, labeling of food that is GM is strict: most of it has been phased out in the last ten years, despite the aggressive tactics for GM products. Meanwhile, back in the US of A, GM products are everywhere and on the rise, in food and drug and in this case hay, without any labeling for the consumer to make a realistic choice. I guess this is what happens when Monsanto employees become FDA members and visa versa. Go figure.
Small farmers have always been a threat to big business interest. Small farmers represent independence and community cohesion. When resource is extracted out of a rich geographical area and the residents of the geographical area are paying for the extraction in so many of the above ways, we are no longer operating as a state within the good ole US of A. We are operating much like a third world country indebted to a world bank. After all, U.S. citizens are collectively part of a debtor nation as well as carrying individual debt loads that would abhor many first world or even developing world countries' citizens.
I will never forget talking to a farmer friend of mine that lives near Hot Springs when the whole hay shortage event was being played out. I called her to tell her that if she hadn’t bought all her hay for the winter, she better buy it quick. No, she said she hadn’t bought all her hay for winter and she had already taken out a bank loan to by what she had put up. Hay is cut a bit earlier in Sanders County, so she had a bigger window of time to secure hay before the price shot up than those farmers living further north. She was completely oblivious to the global tactics that were being implemented out in the innocent looking hay field. Interestingly enough, she did get one clue that a stealth force was lurking when she went to her local feed store. The words of warning uttered to her were, “Beware, the wolf is at your door.”