WHILE soft finishing rains have boosted yield prospects for barley crops across the WA grainbelt, reports of widespread low protein levels have resulted in an expected drop in malt barley supply.
According to the Grains Industry Association of Western Australia’s (GIWA) latest Crop Report, WA barley production has been revised up 4.4 per cent from last month to almost 3.2 million tonnes.
The report has indicated a significant proportion of barley delivered so far has failed to meet the minimum protein benchmark for malt grade of 9.5 per cent.
GIWA oilseeds council chairman and a crop report author Michael Lamond said the unexpected cool, wet conditions throughout September and October following a dry winter, meant several growers held back on inputs.
“The barley yields are better than everyone thought and the way the season went, it was just very unexpected in how it finished so well with mainly cooler temperatures,” Mr Lamond said.
“Growers in the high rainfall areas might go malt but it’s more those medium to low rainfall areas where with the uncertainty about the season, no one fertilised. “What’s happened now that everyone has got into the barley there’s sensational yield, big grain size and just no protein.”
Mr Lamond said frost and moisture had also led to quality downgrades, with some samples returning high screenings and germ-end stain. The CBH Group general manager of Marketing and Trading Jason Craig said it was too early to predict tonnages of each barley grade that would be delivered across the grainbelt.
“The split between malt and feed barley is dependent on a number of factors and can vary significantly year to year, ranging from 20pc to 60pc on the malt side,” Mr Craig said. “At this stage of season it’s difficult to predict where it will end.”
Early this week, feed barley prices at Kwinana were holding above $250 a tonne, while prices for malt grade Bass barley were about $285/t.
Planfarm grain marketing director Jerome Critch said from information gathered from his clients, he expected about one quarter of barley delivered this year to make malt grade.
Mr Critch said this could lead to an increase in price for malt barley due to there being more feed than malt this year.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s necessarily going to be downside in the feed price because feed competes with corn and other feed grains and there’s hundreds of millions of tonnes of that so an extra million tonne or couple million tonne of feed barley is not going to push the international feed price around,” Mr Critch said.
“But a couple of million tonnes short of malt will have a big impact on the supply and demand of malt and therefore we can expect that price to go up.”
Mr Critch said grain marketing decisions had been made easier this year for growers who have had access to CBH receival and quality information through the Loadnet portal.
