UK: Spring malting barley ‘the crop of the year’ in the UK

Spring malting barley looks like being the “crop of the year” with high yields and good quality in terms of low grain nitrogen, while good weather has arrived just in time to help harvesting, the Farmers Weekly reported on August 24.

Many crops across southern and eastern England are some two to three weeks late and survived the wet weather to be harvested as more sun broke through in the second half of this month.

These crops on lighter land are generally showing good results as the combines start to move into heavier-land crops further north.

Bob King, commercial director at Crisp Malting Group, says prospects for a good crop look positive in southern and eastern England, while the Scottish harvest is starting well.

“Spring barley could be the crop of the year, especially on the light land, where we have been seeing some very high yields and low nitrogen contents,” he says.

Most of the English spring malting crop is made up of the varieties Laureate and Planet, which have shown good yields with bold grain and low nitrogen, and Mr King is now waiting to see the quality of crops from heavier land in the East Midlands.

Specific weights have generally been surprisingly good, and have not reflected the picture with winter barleys and winter wheats, which have suffered from a lack of sunshine to fill the grain.

Jonathan Arnold, trading director of grain merchant Robin Appel, which specialises in malting barley, says his crops look very good, and although some were knocked about a bit by the weather, they survived to be harvested in drier times.

“Quality looks good, with nitrogen lower than last season, most below 1.65% and in a range of 1.3-1.8%,” he says.

With most of the spring malting crops now cut in southern England, he sees Laureate as the stand-out performer, with robust yields, low nitrogen and low screening levels.

Most maltsters look for malting barley with a grain nitrogen level below 1.6-1.65% for use in the whisky distilling industry, where Laureate is a favourite, while brewers looks for levels below 1.8% and Planet is often a key variety.

James Maw, managing director of grain trader Viterra UK, formerly Glencore, says spring barleys look promising this harvest and are likely to do better than winter barleys.

“Winter barleys and winter wheats look to be running 3-4kg/hl lower than usual on specific weights, but spring barley looks more positive,” he says.

If grain quality does turn out to be good across the whole harvest and the UK economy picks up after the Covid-19 pandemic then there should be good domestic demand for the crop.

The maltster usually purchases about 1.9m tonnes of malting barley annually for use in brewing, distilling and food manufacturing, and although traders say that level has dropped in the pandemic, it may push back up again with economic recovery.

With poor harvests in France and Germany and low yields in Denmark, there could also be good demand in the export market for quality malting barley.

Norfolk and Yorkshire

Yields and quality of spring barleys are very good at Albanwise Farming, which comprising two farm estates in Norfolk and two in Yorkshire, with grain yields above budget and very low grain nitrogen levels.

Tom Dye, chief executive of the group, says they have cut 900ha of the 1,200ha to combine of the varieties Laureate, Planet and Diablo, with further progress being made this week.

“The spring barleys have been going very well, with all of Yorkshire cut and 50% in Norfolk, and it looks like being the crop of the year,” he says.

Yields are coming in at between 7-9t/ha against a budget of 6.5t/ha and grain nitrogen very low at 1.3-1.4%, well below the 1.6-1.65% the maltsters demand for distilling.

“The quality is fantastic, with one sample coming in at 1% nitrogen, which was the lowest our merchant in Norfolk had even seen,” he adds.

The group farms two estates in Norfolk – one near Holt and another at Barton Bendish – and two in Yorkshire, farming 12,500ha of land in total.

The winter barley harvest on the group’s farms has been more mixed, and winter wheat combining is being frustrated by the weather, with yields ranging from 7-12t/ha.

Dorset

Spring barley harvest has gone very well in south Dorset for farm manager Martin Ford, with yields well above budget at up to 9t/ha compared with a budgeted yield of 7.5ha across just over 100ha.

“This is the first time we have had all Laureate after switching from Propino, and we have been very pleased with nitrogens below 1.65%, and germination has been good, although specific weights were a little light,” he says.

Mr Ford manages the Charborough Park estate between Blandford Forum and Wareham on generally light land, where specialist winter malting barley Maris Otter yielded well at over 7t/ha at 1.45% nitrogen and oilseed rape did 3.3t/ha.

Winter wheats yielded between 9t/ha and 12t/ha, with an average of 10.5t/ha, and some grain samples of Extase and Costello came in very bold at a specific weight of 84kg/hl.

“Overall, harvest has been above average, the weather has been a bit frustrating and we had to dry a bit of grain. Although the straw was tough to cut, it has given a fantastic yield,” he says.

Scotland

Morayshire grower Frank Thomson is optimistic about his spring barley, with 400ha of Laureate to cut and with the first harvested grain coming in at between 7t/ha and 7.5t/ha and quality good.

“Yields are better than we expected back in May, when the crops sat in cold, wet soils,” he says.

Mr Thomson adds with only about a quarter of the spring barley cut earlier this week, he will have a better assessment of the harvest when they move from light land onto the heavy ground with the combine.

He farms with his brother, Wilson, and son Hugh across 800ha at Burnside of Tynet, just to the east of Fochabers at the mouth of the River Spey, and the farm consistently produces good sub-1.65% nitrogen malting barley.

Overall, UK barley production rose to 8.1m tonnes at harvest 2020, its highest level since 1997, due to a big 52% rise in the area of spring barley to 1.1m hectares after poor planting conditions in the autumn of 2019 for winter cereals.

The big rise in the spring barley area more than offset the fall in yields from 6.3t/ha to 5.8t/ha, and total production of spring barley rose 38% to 6.2m tonnes out of the total barley harvest of 8.1m tonnes.

This season, the spring barley area is likely to return to more “normal” levels, with the English area falling 42% to 461,000ha and the best estimate for the UK coming from the AHDB Early Bird survey putting the area down 30% at 756,000ha, more in line with the 2018 and 2019 harvest areas.

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