When it comes to malting barley, farmers shouldn’t assume that what grows best on their land will sell best, says the Canadian Wheat Board’s manager of malt barley market development.
They need to make sure the variety they grow is likely to be bought by a domestic or export maltster, Michael Brophy told farmers during Manitoba Ag Days.
“It’s up to the grower to do some research locally,” said Brophy in an interview.
“If the grower grows it without some indication from a malting company or a selector that there is going to be some demand interest in selecting that,” then they might have trouble, Brophy said.
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To help farmers pick the right varieties for spring planting, the Canadian Malt Barley Technical Centre in Winnipeg has released a list of recommended varieties.
For two-row malt barley, the centre is recommending varieties such as AC Metcalfe, which is growing in popularity and has good markets, and Harrington, which has good markets but is falling in farmer popularity because it is agronomically inferior to some of the newer varieties.
Recommended six-row varieties include the popular Robust and Excel, which each have good markets.
Brophy said farmers should make sure they don’t jump on the centre’s general suggestions and plant a variety for which it says there is market demand. They need to find out from local buyers which varieties will be wanted in that area.
Brophy said a two-row variety like CDC Stratus will probably be easier to market in Manitoba, because an eastern Canadian maltster is using it and Manitoba is a close supply source. It would be less easy to market in Alberta.
Similarly, some of the varieties wanted for the offshore market would probably be easier to market in Saskatchewan than Manitoba, said Brophy.
“Depending on the grower’s location and depending on which market they’re aiming for, they should talk to their local elevator or their malting company to find out which variety is likely to be in demand for them.”
The distribution of two-row and six-row malting barley acreages has been shifting because of disease and changes in market demand.
Six-row varieties are more susceptible to fusarium than two-row varieties, and the disease is chasing that class of malting barley out of Manitoba and into Saskatchewan.
“The grain companies and the U.S. malting companies and industry that are already up here have increasingly moved to eastern Saskatchewan for their supplies of six-row,” said Brophy.
“Manitoba growers have responded by switching to two-row.” But even in the six-row market things have changed. Six-row barley used to dominate American brewers’ demand, but two-row has been making inroads and occupies one-third of U.S. demand. Brophy thinks U.S. two-row use may keep increasing.
Demand from the Canadian market is for about 90 percent two-row, and offshore markets are also biased toward two-row, Brophy said.
