ABSTRACT
Summary There are approximately 0.5 million hectares (ha) of irrigated native grass hay in the mountain and intermountain regions of California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Often these lands are not producing at their full physical or economic potential. The objectives of this study were to identify alternative improvement procedures to increase hay production and to determine the economic feasibility of those alternatives. The principal means of identifying alternative mountain hay-meadow improvement practices and their costs Was personal interviews with ranchers. The ranchers interviewed were owners and/or operators of mountain ranches in Wyoming who were using or had used some meadow improvement practices. Another source of information was previous research on mountain haymeadow improvements and hay production. The interviews revealed different intensities of hay-meadow improvements. These intensities were: (1) farming, (2) farming and structures, (3) farming, structures, and leveling, and (4) farming and sprinklers. The ranch interviews revealed that farming and structures and farming, structures, and leveling were the most common intensities of meadow improvement. To determine the economic feasibilty of these alternative meadow-improvement programs, the returns and costs associated with each level of meadow improvement were computed. By deducting the annual production and harvest costs from gross returns the net return/ha was obtained for each of the intensities of meadow improvement. The annual net returns/ha ranged from a low of $ - 140.05 to a high of $167.13. Using the net return/ha and the initial capital investment, the economic feasibility and relative merit of each level of meadow improvement was determined by discounting the stream of net returns to a common base year. The largest net present value was for the farming option, which was $580/ha using a 10% discount rate and 20-year time horizon. The lowest net return was for the farming and sprinkler option with $ - 747/ha using the same discount rate and time period.
