[hopfenundmalz]

This is what I remembered reading about Barley, and there is more on the online version.

http://www.byo.com/blogs/where-has-all-the-barley-gone-.html

[hopfenundmalz]

To a certain extent the market a farmer sells into involves crop quality.  If your quality is low, it goes into the feed market and you get less for it.  Malting companies will only purchased the highest quality grain so even a good yield may lead to a short market in top grade barley in a year with bad growing conditions.  Commodities markets are scary places to do business.

Besides corn, Canola has also been taking over acres that used to be planted to barley.  Canola is the current king in the "not as bad for you as lard" oil market.  There is a high demand for it and since it was developed in Canada the barley growing regions are perfectly suited to it.  The industry is also developing more heat resistant strains of Canola and it is starting to push out wheat acres out further south.

Like everything else right now, I wouldn't look for prices of barley to go down anytime soon.  Just hope for smaller increases.

Paul

Saw a lot of fields of "canola" in Germany and the UK back in the late 90's.  There it is known as rapeseed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed

[ibru]

The growers aren't in business to lose money (not on purpose anyway). If a crop isn't likely to turn a profit, it's kind of hard to justify growing, isn't it? I believe that contract production is the way it will go. Most barley growing areas are outside the corn belt meaning their growing season is too short.

On subsidies, most farmers that I know wish the government would stay to heck out of agriculture period. But they want to control, as best they can, food production. More voters eat food than grow it.

If our government weren't so annal in their petrolium policies, the input costs would go down significantly. 

[morticaixavier]

I wonder what the organic barley market is doing? How it compares to conventional. There is alot of added value in organic crops as they can be sold at a premium and require alot less inputs.

[denny]

Can't speak to organic barley, but there was an article in out local paper recently about how many hop growers around here are going organic.

http://www.registerguard.com/web/business/26962194-41/organic-hops-beer-beers-brewers.html.csp


This guy's hop farm is about 2 mi. down the road from me....

http://special.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/business/20619718-46/story.csp

[ibru]

Denny- Ol' Norman better invest in some guard dogs to keep the neighbors out...

Had to chuckle at the below minimum wage. My first few years in business were like that; wrie myself a check, then wait until the business had enough in the bank to cash it.

[denny]

Denny- Ol' Norman better invest in some guard dogs to keep the neighbors out...

Had to chuckle at the below minimum wage. My first few years in business were like that; wrie myself a check, then wait until the business had enough in the bank to cash it.

Geez, man, my business was 5 years old before I could even write myself a check!

Norm's a great guy....I hope his business does well.

[Kit B]

Anheuser-Busch laughs, "Half of our beer is corn anyway! This won't affect us at all, haHA!"

Rice.

I wonder what Canada's barley numbers look like.

[beersk]

Anheuser-Busch laughs, "Half of our beer is corn anyway! This won't affect us at all, haHA!"

Rice.

I wonder what Canada's barley numbers look like.

Damn it, I knew I was wrong somehow.  So SAB-Miller, then.  Bah. 

[majorvices]

FWIW prices for corn and rice are going up as well.

[dbeechum]

Damn it, I knew I was wrong somehow.  So SAB-Miller, then.  Bah. 

Meh, they use corn syrup. (At least judging from the railroad sidings at the brewery out in Irwindale being filled with Cargill tankers marked as Corn Syrup)