Grading lucerne: good for animals, good for your pocket
In the past, lucerne was considered a lowvalue pasture or rotation crop, and was primarily used as a supplement. However, in recent decades, it has become valuable and profitable, competing successfully with many higher-value speciality crops.
Today, many producers approach lucerne production as a serious business enterprise, with careful consideration of costs, value and markets.
Whether you produce lucerne hay to sell or feed to your animals, correctly assigning the economic value of the crop can impact the profitability of your business. Therefore, there must be a quality and grading system for lucerne hay that is fair to both producers and buyers, and one that, ultimately, represents the product accurately.
As the production and handling of lucerne has changed over the past 50 years, the National Lucerne Trust (NLT) decided in 2021 to implement its revised lucerne hay grading table for all near-infrared spectrophotometers (NIR instruments) registered at the NLT Hay Quality and Grading Scheme (NLT-Scheme). This was necessary to establish a more uniform
