Sustainability: "It's about the soil."

Lately, and for obvious reasons, I've been fond of saying that the first ironclad rule of sustainability is survival. Without respiration, the remainder is rhetoric.

Then there's crop rotation.

What Farm-to-Table Got Wrong, by Dan Barber (New York Times)

... Today, almost 80 percent of Americans say sustainability is a priority when purchasing food. The promise of this kind of majority is that eating local can reshape landscapes and drive lasting change.

Except it hasn’t.

One section is of specific interest to beer fans.

... It’s one thing for chefs to advocate cooking with the whole farm; it’s another thing to make these uncelebrated crops staples in ordinary kitchens. Bridging that divide will require a new network of regional processors and distributors.

Take beer, for example. The explosion in local microbreweries has meant a demand for local barley malt. A new malting facility near Klaas’s farm recently opened in response. He now earns 30 percent more selling barley for malt than he did selling it for animal feed. For other farmers, it’s a convincing incentive to diversify their grain crops.

It isn't for nothing that we refer to food chains, and in the case of barley (and hops), local supplies count for little absent the means to malt and process them. While it's true that many readers already know this, remember that others don't. It can make for interesting barside conversation.

"US barley acreage has declined to record low levels."

The information that follows has been copied from the Brewers Association Forum Vol. 13-0912, and should be of interest to all readers.

Yesterday we took a glance at sobering news for the hopheads among us.

Today I’m posting a second excerpt from the Forum, this one on the topic of barley malt pricing and availability.

As noted yesterday, none of this is designed to inspire panic or perpetuate doomsday scenarios. Rather, it's useful to nurse the occasional dose of realism about where the beer in the glass comes from, and what it takes to make it.

Chase it with a good beer, and keep your fingers crossed. The planet’s reliance on water is well documented, but so far, I can find no alarming prognostications about yeast shortages.

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From: Mike Davis
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: 2007: Revenge of the Commodities

Paul Gatza called me recently and I reviewed the many factors that are impacting the supply of malting barley. The world markets are interconnected, so what happens in any major supply area, such as the US, impacts the entire chain. The American Malting Barley Association (AMBA), which is comprised of US malting & brewing companies, works with and knows the US situation, so I will primarily comment on that.

US barley acreage has declined to record low levels, and one reason, as pointed out by Jeremy, is likely the high demand/return for corn for ethanol, which encourages growers to plant corn instead of malting barley. With the barley breeding programs in the US that we collaborate with and support, we stress the need to develop the highest yielding malting varieties so that they will be grown for both feed, fuel, and malting. However, it is difficult to combine all the quality characters our industry demands with high yield, and our industry is slow to change over to new, higher yielding varieties.

Developing high yielding varieties for feed/fuel is easier and quicker and this is the competition we must strive to overcome.

Currently, all malting varieties in the US are spring varieties, but we have winter malting lines in development and testing that can out yield spring varieties up to 25 percent and require one less watering, a big advantage in the West where water is scarce. These winter malting barley varieties, if successful, may be able to pick up acreage that is currently planted to winter wheat in the West.

Another major factor is that federal support to growers, as determined by the Farm Bill, has favored the planting of other crops, such as soybeans, over barley, by providing higher support levels to growers. We are working hard in collaboration with the National Barley Growers Association (NBGA) for more favorable provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill, which will be effective for five years, starting with the 2008 crop. We are pleased that the BA signed on to the joint letter to Congress spearheaded by the Beer Institute, at our urging, encouraging Congress to support the joint AMBA/NBGA Farm Bill positions. The House has passed a version of the Farm Bill that is more favorable to barley and we're now working on the Senate.

Once that is passed, we'll need grass roots support (contacting your members of Congress) to help ensure that the most favorable provisions are retained in House/Senate Conference when the final bill is developed.

Working with the Institute of Barley and Malt Sciences at North Dakota State University, growers in the 3 major US barley producing states were surveyed recently as to why they grow or no longer grow malting barley. Of course, economic return is the most important factor - they will plant crops that give them the highest return, and we must face reality, that there is a lot of competition. Other factors come into play, and we are trying to address those (e.g. developing best management practices to growers to increase their chances of success).

Mike Davis, President
American Malting Barley Association, Inc.
www.AMBAinc.org