IANAFarmer: Grazing animals like horses and cows need to eat something over the winter. You can plant fields of grass and harvest them into hay bales for storage. If you aren't devoting any/enough of your land as hay fields, then you need to buy hay from someone else.
I read/watched some long time ago that for the majority of farmers wanting to provide hay for their animals, it makes no economic sens to grow their own.
This means that most of the hay being consumed is purchased somewhere else.
There’s a small (5 acres maybe) field by me where the farmer keeps horses. He moves the horses from one half of the field to the other and grows hay in the opposite side. I see him cut it down and bale it about twice a year. Looks like it’s pretty self sustaining. I’ve never stopped to talk to the owner about it.
My father had a small farm(20ish acres) with cattle, as did a lot of people in the area at the time. There wasn't really a cost for hay outside of time and equipment up front(which isn't a lot), they just let the grass grow, cut it, let it sit, hit it with tines, bale it, etc.
Are you saying it's not efficient, and a full efficiency farm would use said grassland for crops instead? I can see that, but then where do the cattle roam?
This is not the original source (was it a planet money episode? I really can't remember), but here's what I found:
> You also may want to compare the costs of purchasing hay with producing your own hay. In some markets, it may be cheaper to buy someone else’s hay and use your own forage for additional grazing. Finally, knowing your harvesting costs is critical for a custom operator who wants to be profitable over the long haul.
