Carryover is low and none is quality crop: Cargill Malt
The demand for malting barley may be increasing, but the amount being produced has put Canada in a tough situation.
At the Agri-Trend Farm Forum held in Saskatoon Dec. 3, Lorelle Selinger addressed what the lack of barley means for Canada, and North America as a whole.
“In a normal year, Canada would export at least one billion tonnes of quality malt barley. But a year like this, Canada will export 30,000 outside of North America,” she said.
“Not only do we have the lowest carryover, we have the lowest carryover and none of it is quality malt barley.”
Selinger works at Cargill Malt as the North American merchandising manager.
While yields this year weren’t horrible, she said most of the barley gathered was unusable.
“I anticipate we could be importing up to 500,000 tonnes of barley for malting purposes, primarily because we just can’t find it here.”
Selinger said moisture played a major role in the decline.
“We had way more moisture than we’re used to and it definitely affected all our crops.”
The United States faced a similar problem. Many growing regions there saw 400 to 745 percent more than normal precipitation during harvest.
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Yet Selinger said it’s the decline in barley acres that is having the biggest impact. From 2003-12, Canadian farmers have severely cut their barley acres.
“In Canada, we had 12.3 million acres. This past year, we had just over 6.1 (million),” she said.
Selinger said canola is one reason for that drop.
“It’s taken place in rotation and moved a lot of people from three year rotations to four year, or from two to three year. It’s taken barley out that extra year,” she said.
The acreage shortage makes it difficult to build barley back up after such a tough year.
Selinger said she doesn’t believe the trend of decreased acres is going to change anytime soon.
robyn.tocker@producer.com
