North America: Soil moisture levels in Canada are the best since many years. The acreage will be a little smaller than last year's, yields as well, the IGC forecasts a crop of 12.2 million tonnes, 1 million tonnes below 2004. Conditions are less favorable in the U.S., it is dry from western North Dakota all the way to the Pacific Northwest. The USDA planting intentions show that farmers want to plant barley on 1.61 million ha, 12 % less than last year and 25 % less than in 2003. The barley acreage will be smaller than the acres of oats, it must be feared that barley will become a small specialty crop in the USA. Also South America grows only small barley crops exclusively for malting, therefore Canada remains the sole country on the whole continent with an ample barley supply.

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