Does Diverse Seeding Adoption Reduce Production Costs? The Case of Diverse Forage Seeding Strategies in West Virginia.

Author

• Ivan Andres WongFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7429-9623

Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Division of Resource Economics & Management

Committee Chair

Ana Claudia Sant'Anna

Committee Member

Jessica Blythe

Committee Member

Kathryn Gazal

Abstract

Feed and harvested forage represent a major share of production costs in Appalachian cow-calf systems, where a pronounced summer forage gap forces producers to rely on purchased hay. This thesis evaluates whether adopting diverse forage seeding strategies reduces production costs relative to the existing pasture management practice, accounting for the spatial heterogeneity of West Virginia’s production environments. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, an unsupervised K-means clustering of 14 farms enrolled in the NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant field trial groups the farms into two agroclimatic clusters, Highland-Cool and LowlandWarm, using elevation, growing-season Growing Degree Days, growing-season precipitation, and soil organic matter. Second, within each cluster, an enterprise-budget cost-minimization framework compares three seeding scenarios, Status Quo, Low Diversity, and High Diversity, holding revenue and fixed costs constant so that differences in net return derive from pasture establishment costs and purchased-hay requirements.

Under baseline conditions, Status Quo yields the lowest total cost and therefore the highest net return in both clusters, and this ranking holds across all matched-condition combinations of hay price and forage-gap quantity examined in the sensitivity analysis. A switch-point analysis indicates that the diverse strategies would become cost-competitive only at a hay price roughly 3.5 times the highest real price observed over 2015-2024, or at a forage-biomass advantage over 1.5 times larger than the status quo – higher than the current ~19% advantage recorded in the field trial. Because the biomass differentials underlying these results were sampled from immature stands, the estimated result should be interpreted as conservative. The findings help clarify the conditions under which diverse forage seeding is, and is not, a cost-reducing strategy for small Appalachian producers.

Recommended Citation

Wong, Ivan Andres, "Does Diverse Seeding Adoption Reduce Production Costs? The Case of Diverse Forage Seeding Strategies in West Virginia." (2026). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD). 13482.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/13482