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CASTLE MALTING NEWS in partnership with www.e-malt.com French
06 January, 2021



Barley news UK: Oversupply of spring barley likely to continue next year

An oversupply of quality spring barley is likely to continue next year, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to stifle demand from brewers and distillers, the Farmers Weekly reported on January 6.

The likely result will be continued downward pressure on price and fussy malting barley buyers this autumn, leaving one expert asking if it might be better to go all out for high feed yields instead of low grain nitrogen.

The 2020 spring barley growing season already started with a supply hangover from 2019, with stores already holding 250,000 tonnes surplus of malting quality grain for use in brewing or distilling.

With the 2020 area then hitting an all-time high of 1.1 mln hectares due to the winter wheat planting woes at the backend of 2019, and a hospitality industry closed for much last year, the barley glut was further compounded.

This inevitably dented price, but also resulted in buyers becoming much tighter on specification, and there were widespread reports of rejections for what can only be described as whimsical reasons.

Despite the AHDB Early Bird survey predicting a more normal 767,000 ha of spring barley for 2021, oversupply will remain bearish on price and maintain a higher probability of rejected loads, thus exposing the grower to greater risk.

There is the added factor of variety line-up changes, with old favourite Concerto being removed from the Recommended List, and this is likely to see growers move to newer, higher-yielding varieties.

Eric Anderson, senior agronomist and director at Scottish Agronomy, believes this combination of factors may prompt a change in mindset for 2021 in an effort to de-risk what is an important crop for many, particularly on lighter land.

He says that where a headline malting barley contract price in 2020 was £160-£170/t, once rejected loads were taken into account, many growers in Scotland only returned about £140/t.

When growers could fetch about £130/t for feed barley, Mr Anderson says it has been a hard pill to swallow for some after reducing nitrogen inputs to hit malting spec, which inevitably sacrifices total yield.

“At the moment, you are looking at about £140/t for feed barley for harvest 2021, which when budgeting for a yield of 7t/ha turns in a net margin of about £474/ha.

“A malting crop yielding 6.2 t/ha at £160/t would give you £512/ha, but it doesn’t take many rejections to be back at £474/ha.

“This year, it might be worth hedging your bets with the right variety and making a decision on nitrogen input once it’s in the ground, depending on market conditions,” explains Mr Anderson.

One variety that Mr Anderson singles out as a standout candidate for this strategy is LG Diablo, which has topped both treated (8.07t/ha) and untreated (7.23t/ha) yields in Scottish Agronomy’s five trial sites across Scotland over the past three years.

It also stands up well on the official Recommended List nationally, where it is just behind the highest-yielding feed varieties but, importantly, has full Malting Barley Committee approval for both brewing and malt distilling.





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