growing and selling hulless barley

[shaller]

i have been growing hulless varieties for a few years and am growing less and less fond of the stuff. each year i seem to get decent yeilds but no one want,s to pay what its worth , or they dont know what it is or the advantages of using it. am I doing something wrong or is this stuff loosing its appeal. any help would be great!!!

[rjgraham]

hulless is a product without a broad customer group. The value of the crop is not valued by most hog feeders; the natural customers. We have given up trying to extract value from this crop, to make up for the agronomy shortfalls. Until the buyers are willing to pay for the extra costs, CPS wheats are a far better cash crop, with fewer agronomy problems. Varieties will change depending on where you're farming.

[navena]

As a farmer who has both grown and fed hulless barley (to hogs), I am in love with the stuff! However,I realize that you growers do not receive the 15-20% more $ for it that you should for a good quality sample. It seems to me that this has happened for two reasons. One is the name 'barley'...the perception is that this product is barley and thats what sets the price. The other is that no large grain company ever had success with it (UGG had 2 poor varieties) and so there never was any huge advertising campaign putting it in front of everyone. The sellers of the grain have done a wonderful job of providing research, field days, user references...they just ran into a hog industry which (although normally a tremendously innovative group) just missed the boat on this one and they did not have the massive advertising budget necessary. I think that you may need to have a personal contract with a feeder (who does believe in the grain itself) and market it that way-the grain industry isn't doing that. Don Gregorwich

[shaller]

DON if you have a need for some hulless drop me a note ( shaller@telusplanet.net

[navena]

Nope, I don't need any hulless. I sold all my hogs on July 1/98 and am too scared of the pig industry to get back into it -yet...I'm not sure that my 100 sow farrow to finish operation is off the endangered list in a new pig industry. However, I will note your address and pass it along to any hog people I know.