By Harry Siemens / Farmscape.ca — While those who support the Canadian Wheat Board would have producers believing the drop in barley and even wheat acres has to do with weather and other such things, but there are those who actually think it has to do with economics.
A researcher with the University of Saskatchewan told Bruce Cochrane at Farmscape.ca the main reason for recent drops in the number of acres seeded to barley in western Canada is economics.
End users of barley have expressed concern over the dwindling number of acres seeded to the crop in western Canada in recent years.
Dr. Brian Rossnagel, an oat and barley breeder with the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre, said it comes down to economics and barley just isn’t priced high enough.
“Thirty years ago, when I first was in school we thought about rotations and we talked a lot about rotations between cereal crops but the reality in western Canada now is that rotations are really between cereals, pulses and oilseeds,” said Rossnagel. “Within the cereals, for most farmers in most situations, it doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot whether that rotation crop is wheat, oats or barley and they’ll choose the one that makes the most economic sense for them.”
He said when a farmer looks at what they do, most likely he things what is the worst case scenario here and when they’re growing barley most of them are looking to grow malting barley. If they can make malt they’ll probably do O.K. relative to wheat or oat.
However if the worst case scenario is selling it for feed, Rossnagel said about a decade or so ago, maybe even five or six years ago, the producer could say if he gets feed for this, he’ll cover costs. For the last few years and currently it simply doesn’t make economic sense to put the barley seed in the ground.
“You’re better off growing, depending on where you’re located in western Canada, oats or wheat and particularly wheat,” he said. “It’s much more flexible and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re going to be able to get for it. The real issue is that barley has become the bottom crop of the three cereals in terms of choice for most people.”
The bottom line is that the floor price for barley, which was feed, has really dropped too low to be economically viable for many producers in western Canada.
Dr. Rossnagel said the producer needs to look at the value of crops and if barley doesn’t have additional value then it makes sense to grow wheat or oats.