WINNIPEG — Barley seeding is well underway across Western Canada and almost complete in southern Alberta, said the president of the Barley Council of Canada.
“We’re two weeks ahead here in southern Alberta. There’s guys that have wrapped up, they’re done seeing already,” said Brian Otto.
On his own farm in Warner, Alta., Otto said conditions are good enough that he plans to begin seeding sometime this week.
The situation is similar in many parts of Saskatchewan too, a far cry from last year when seeding was delayed due to wet weather.
Read Also
Alberta Crop Report: Rains in the south, dryness in the north
Rain fell onto the southern half of Alberta last week, while hot and dry conditions persisted in the northern half, according to the province’s crop report released on July 18.
While Statistics Canada has pegged 2015 barley acreage as 6.5 million acres, Otto believes it could turn out to be slightly more, “maybe 6.4 or 6.8, something like that,” if the weather stays favourable. Canadian farmers seeded 5.4 million acres in 2014.
“We got moisture to get things started, but we’ve had days of wind so our ground is getting crusted, so we’ll need some rain here in the next couple of weeks for sure,” Otto added.
Malt prices have stayed largely in the $5.50 to $6 per bushel range over the past few years, according to Otto, and he expects that to remain the case.
He has already signed a contract with a major maltster for his acres, a practise that is generally becoming the norm.
“For anybody growing malt barely, we like to have our contracts signed with maltsters with pricing in place. We’ve had contracts signed before we put a kernel in the ground,” said Otto.
He said he’s seen a bit of an uptick in new crop contracts over the past week, which is a good sign.
Most of the crop going into the Western Canada will be two-row varieties and should be good enough to qualify for malting purposes, said Otto, but even if it’s downgraded to feed, there should be buyers for that too.
“The feed market is holding up very well. I think the barley industry is looking healthy,” he said.
As far as foreign sales go, Otto said off-shore markets for Canadian barley look to remain steady this year, both for feed and malt supplies.
“I would say right now, looking at the world situation, we would be on an average for barley exports right now.”
