USA: Barley markets remain steady

Barley prices for the most part of the last couple of weeks remained steady on both the feed and malting side of the ledger, Farm & Ranch Guide published April 26.

However, even though malting prices will probably continue on at fairly consistent level in coming weeks, Randy Brag from Valley Grain Services in Casselton, looks for a little softening in the feed barley side of things.

“Feed barley prices slid back a little bit after the planting intentions report and then perked up a little again, slid back again and now have picked up again,” Brag said. “But the deferred bids indicate that feed barley will decline slightly during the next few months until probably August - mainly due to the fact that we will have a new supply of barley coming at that time.

“The deferred bids at this time are about $2.85 railside, which would be $2.65 to the farmer,” he continued. “And that's not a terrible price, there was probably a time when a farmer could have contracted as high as $2.80, but the $2.65 is a good level.”

The 18 percent hike in planned barley acres in North Dakota for the upcoming crop season didn't astonish Brag, since he indicated barley has many positive things working on its behalf this spring.

“For me there were no surprises as far as planting intentions,” Brag said. “The malting barley contracts were at a fair price and there were some new crop feed barley bids that were up there pretty good.

“And the other factor is when you start looking at fertilizer costs at $400 to $500 a ton - barley is a low input crop, so farmers considered barley in their cropping plans because of the lower cost factor,” he added.

The storage issue is probably another reason why barley planting intentions were higher, according to Brag. With more corn acres and higher yields per acre from corn, he feels some growers decided to go with a crop that could be marketed in late summer or early fall, such as barley, that would free up their existing storage capacity for the corn crop.

The April 10 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) from the USDA indicated domestic usage of barley during the current marketing year will increase by 5 million bushels, leading to a drop in domestic barley carryover stocks by a similar amount to 68 million bushels. The report suggested an average on the farm price for barley of $2.88 during the marketing year.

On the world-wide situation, the ending supply of course grains, which includes corn, sorghum, barley, oats, rye and mixed grains, is expected to increase by 4.58 million metric tons, but the report indicates corn is expected to account for almost 4 million metric tons of that increase.

Checking the markets closer to home, elevator board prices on the smallgrains.org website indicated mostly steady markets for malting barley, with a handful of locations reporting price increases of a nickel to a dime. Prices for malting barley ranged from a low of $3.25 to $3.65 a bushel.

Feed barley prices were steady to as much as 25 cents higher, with prices in the $2.80 to $3.30 range. At some locations, the difference between feed and malting barley prices have narrowed to as little as 20 cents a bushel at some elevators, with the average difference in the neighbourhood of 40 cents.

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