(Resource News International) — Western Canadian farmers are finally making good progress on this year’s barley harvest, but cool, wet conditions earlier in the growing season will likely cut into the quality of the crop.
Malt barley merchant Rod Green of Central Ag Marketing at Airdrie, Alta., said quality will definitely be an issue with this year’s Canadian malt barley crop. As a result, he said, domestic maltsters will be widening their acceptance criteria in order to attract enough supplies.
Green said farmers were making great harvest progress, given the better weather, and were seeing large yields in some areas. The quality on early-harvested crops was generally good, although internal sprouting, or chitting, was becoming an issue in some later harvested fields.
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Chitting hurts the longevity of the barley and causes it to lose its germination earlier, said Green.
Ron Frost, of Agri-Trend Marketing Inc. and Frost Forecast Consulting in Alberta, said there were some very good, but also some very bad, barley fields out there.
Questions of test weights could become an issue going forward, he said, as a fair amount of the barley coming in was lighter weight.
However, with large carryover supplies, the concern is not the malt supplies over the next four months, but next July/August, said Green.
While there will be some quality issues, there could also be some positives with this year’s barley crop. Wetter weather, as was the case this summer, also usually translates into lower protein levels, which is what end users are looking for in malt barley.
Very few samples were hitting the 14 per cent protein level this fall, Green said, with many in the 11-12 per cent range this year. “The average protein should definitely be lower,” he said.
If the forecast for the next two or three weeks comes to pass, and the warm dry conditions persist, “it will help a lot,” said Green.
In a recent pool return outlook (PRO), the Canadian Wheat Board said supplies of high-quality malting barley were tightening around the world, and cited poor conditions in Europe and Western Canada.
Higher prices were causing some end users to back away, leading to some uncertainty in the global markets, the CWB said.
