Malt Co's. keep us in the dark ages

[lorne]

My latest pet peeve is that although the malt barley breeders are doing a great job of introducing superior varieties ( than Harrington ) for western Canadian farmers , the malsters are not following through by selecting them . (ie) -they seem reluctant to move away from the old stand-bys . As a seed grower I have to pay royalties and check-offs from every bushel I sell to help support the Plant Breeding Industry . What is the point of spending all this time and money if the malsters are not going to select new varieties ? How do we get the message across to the Malt Industry that it is to time to jump into the 90's ???

[mhartman]

I don't know if the maltsters are truly to blame. Their customers specify Harrington. Perhaps agencies like CIGI or CWB should run information sessions for international buyers of 2 row malt to show the performance of newer varieties. It sure would be nice for growers if Harrington lost its preferred status!

[charliep]

The comment the customer is always right fits here. The brewers/end users are the ones that call the shots and they want harrington. I suspect this year may be a turning point as I am hearing a lot of disease disasters in harrington barley. They are going to have to be prepared to look at other varieties or they won't have enough supplies to meet their needs. Before I leave this topic behind, I have to highlight there are three distinct malting barley markets that we need to look after: domestic malt houses, US, the rest of the world. Domestic malt houses are well aware of the problems with harrington and are working with customers to switch - a slow process when they are happy with the old variety/have had no incentive to switch (this year may be different). China and the rest of the world are in the same situation - happy with no reason to try others to date except on a test basis. It is also a chicken and egg situation - lots of harrington being grown because this is the signal that is given farmers/not enough supplies of other malt barley supplies to fill a customers needs on a regular monthly basis. I leave the US to the last to give you another alternative on malt barley. The main demand here is six row white aleuron barley. The US is down 1 mln barley acres this year with this trend likely to continue in the future. Fusarium issues in their traditional sourcing areas (Red River valley area of N. Dakota and Man./eastern Sask.) means that US maltsters are having to expand the area they will source seed from. Realizing it is a pretty hefty freight bill from Alta./western Sask. to Minneapolis, US malsters are going to have to look further into this region to make sure they have supplies or be more prepared to look at 2 row varieties as a replacement. Interesting but I suspect that 2 row/6 row payment spreads will have to narrow in the future to get this signal out. Thoughts.

[charliep]

Charlie, your analysis is pretty accurate. There was a question in an earlier message suggesting that there should be work being done to demonstrate some of our newer varieties. There have been two CIGI programs focusing on malt barley and malt in the past two months. There was an international program with participants from approximately 15 countries in July, and a bilateral program between Canada and China, conducted in Mandarin, in August. Both of these programs profiled the quality of the newer varieties available. There have also been recent visits by China to Canada to visit the Canadian malting industry and to gain greater knowledge of the quality of the new malt barley varieties. This week, there is a rep from the CWB attending the 9th Australian Barley Technical Symposium to gain a keen perspective on the competition as well. I think buyers are starting to realize that Harrington is a little long in the tooth and has problems. Unfortunately though, they still really like it because it is so familiar. Recent interest in Stratus and Kendall and Metcalfe are encouraging though. Over the longer term, there will be a Technical Malting and Brewing Center established soon (likley in Winnipeg) that will give the CWB/CIGI additional ability to demonstrate new varieties, provide training and to help maltsters around the world to use different varieties to meet their specifications. Tom