Australian Production Targets

[charliep]

Just a note to highlight the following press release out of Australia.

http://www.grdc.com.au/whats_on/mr/west/western_region05010.htm

Comments?

[Vader]

How much natural gas is the going to take (to produce Nitrogen fertilizer) to meet the expected doubling in production? Will genetic modification produce a "legume" barley that produces its own nitrogen?

In general terms how will next years nitrogen prices impact grain prices? Will grain prices respond or will farmers simply be caught in the middle?

How much competition will there be in the world to take advantage of the increasing market demand? Who else will target a doubling of their production?

[charliep]

I will leave thoughts about impact to discussion. A comment I will have is that perhaps a cooperative target for both Australia and Canada is to make barley a more competitive crop with corn and try to grow the market. Some of the trends you talk about may make that happen - takes a lot of nitrogen to grow a 150 plus bushel/acre corn crop versus a average 60 bushel/acre barley crop.

I note your comments about nitrogen fixation. There will be other areas of research - frost tolerance, sprout tolerance in the field at harvest but not in the malt house, specialty barley built for specific consumer needs, etc.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was the process to get industry involvement and commitment. Several processes are going on in Canada (eg. Federal government led industry value chain round tables of which there is a cereal group and a barley working group of which I am a part).

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

Corn is grown on soybean stubble, which does fix N for the Corn.

What % of western Canada grows barley on pulse stubble in comparison?

We need a pulse oilseed to fix N for our barley/wheat, unless peas/fababeans are rotated with Canola, which does work reasonably well.