High Quality Barley Available as Feed

CANADA - The Canadian Wheat Board reports there will be a large volume of excellent quality barley available this winter for feed, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 12 December 2008
clock icon 3 minute read

2008 saw a strong global production of barley.

Canadian Wheat Board barley marketing manager Lorelle Selinger says when making marketing decisions both buyers and sellers need to keep in mind there's a large volume of barley out there so prices are not likely to up.

Lorelle Selinger-Canadian Wheat Board

This past year western Canadian farmers experienced a good crop.

We had production numbers over 11 million tonnes in western Canada itself of barley, which is averaging over 60 bushels an acre throughout western Canada.

Of this a large proportion of it is selectable for malting.

Possibly up to four million tonnes are of that quality.

Likely, though, the malting program will not be that large.

The remainder of it will go into the feed market.

Quality wise, we've had a very good crop.

We got off to a bit of a rough start during harvest with some wet conditions and such but the late dry time during mid to late-September really finished things off nicely.

We had a very plump crop, heavy barley, very good quality.

Global production this year was very high.

In the EU and Russia combined they've produced over 19 million tonnes more than in past years.

Australia has finished with a bit larger crop than in past years.

They've had some quality issues over the last little while.

They experienced some drought conditions as well as some late rains which will take some of the barley in some of their malting regions and move it into the feed market as well.


Selinger says, while domestic prices have dropped, domestic values are still stronger than export values.

She notes, over the past month, prices in Lethbridge have dropped from about 190 dollars per tonne to 160 dollars or even below.

She says this is still higher than the export market and, as long as the domestic values remain stronger, it's unlikely a lot of barley will be exported as feed.

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