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With harvest underway, Anderson Hay seeks longer-term spending permission | Capital Press.With harvest underway, Anderson Hay seeks longer-term spending permission Published 8:00 am Friday, May 29, 2026 Company seeks to assure growers that they will be paid With the alfalfa harvest underway, Anderson Hay is seeking longer-term authorization to spend cash during bankruptcy proceedings and reassure farmers they’ll be timely paid for crops.Since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late last year, Anderson Hay of Ellensburg, Wash., has repeatedly asked the bankruptcy court for monthly permission to use cash that serves as collateral for its debts.Though the company has “grudgingly” agreed to repeatedly seek such “month-to-month” approval during the “off-season,” it’s no longer tenable now that growers are harvesting hay and need to know they’ll be compensated, said James Day, its bankruptcy attorney.“It is right now into the harvest season and there isn’t really any way from a business standpoint that we can have that type of month-to-month renewal of cash collateral authority,” Day told the bankruptcy court during a May 27 hearing.“Rather, we need it for a longer term.” Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows companies to shield their assets from foreclosure while restructuring debts and business operations.Request from unsecured creditors The month-to-month requests have largely been made at the behest of its major creditors, who have preferred short-term cash collateral authorizations to protect their interests due to uncertainties about Anderson Hay’s financial situation.Though the bankruptcy court did previously allow the company to pay growers for past hay deliveries, Anderson Hay now wants to provide them with assurances of payment for alfalfa and Timothy crops that are currently coming off the field.This request for longer term cash collateral authorization — likely through October — was bolstered by a committee of unsecured creditors, who lack collateral for loans, including farmers who deliver crops to the company and are paid for them later.“The growers have the certainty and timing of their payment for this year’s crop at the very top of mind,” said Tim Conway, attorney for the unsecured creditors committee.“What they’re going to be doing and who they’re going to contract with is critically important.For the debtor, if they want to have the growers’ support, it is going to be very similar to the beginning of the case, when we teed up the assumption of the grower contracts for last year’s harvest.” PGIM Real Estate Finance, a major creditor that’s owed about $15 million, is hopeful to work out a deal with Anderson Hay about the longer-term cash collateral authorization, though the length of that permission remains a “sticky issue,” said Peter Roberts, an attorney for the company.“I’m optimistic we can work through our differences,” he said.A hearing about Anderson Hay’s use of cash collateral was rescheduled from June 4 until June 17, but James Day, its attorney, said growers should not interpret this as an indication that permission for crop payments will come in “fits and starts.” “We are doing everything we can to create certainty in their minds that when we do place orders and take delivery of product, under circumstances where payment is due the month following delivery, that their payments will actually be made,” Day said.Bankruptcy Judge Whitman Holt, who is overseeing Anderson Hay’s case, agreed there appears to be a need for a significantly longer usage period for the company’s cash collateral.The judge also approved a recent motion for Anderson Hay to sell its straw-compressing facility in Aurora, Ore., for $8 million to entrepreneurs who hope to revive Oregon’s flax textile industry, as well as the sale of associated equipment for $640,000 to another forage exporter.The judge originally approved the sale of that 26-acre property for $10.75 million, but the flax entrepreneurs had to renegotiate that agreement because they were unable to obtain financing for the initial purchase price.