North America: Barley harvest advancing although sometimes slowly due to variable rainfall

Despite variable rainfall across major barley regions, harvest has advanced, although slowly at times, RMI Analytics said in their latest report.

In Canada, Alberta is 30-40% harvested overall with the south 70% or more completed. In Saskatchewan, harvest is further advanced with barley over 50% completed, which is ahead of the 5-year average. Similar to Alberta, the southern regions are over 60% harvested, partially due to the dry conditions bringing maturity earlier.

For Canada barley production, RMI Analytics’ forecast remains at 7.87 mln tonnes, unchanged from the previous journal, which represents the second drought impacted crop over the last three years. Exports are forecast to drop dramatically to 1.7 mln tonnes, down from 3.1 mln in crop 2022.

For the US, at the end of August harvest was 61% completed (according to USDA) versus a 5-year average of 69% completed. Yields are slightly better than 2022 and back above the 10-year average. There are some pockets where rain impacted final quality with some pre-sprout, but any issues are deemed workable and the market is in OK shape.

Canada barley prices are lower, with domestic feed prices continuing a sharp decline with harvest pressure weighing on the market, and in the process alleviating the challenge for exporters to compete for export. The long anticipated drop in feed barley is occurring despite the smaller crop result.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .