Hop growers pay the price for rain
OLN asks UK growers what's brewing in the world of malt and hops.
The cold and rainy summer of 2007 may have been tough for the brewers watching beer sales stagnate - but it was even tougher for farmers growing malt and hops. Rain threatened to ruin harvests and some farmers even found themselves spraying crops with half of the tractor under water.
The good news for growers is that malt and hop prices have finally stabilised after years of oversupply. Whether that will push brewers and retailers to raise beer prices remains to be seen.
Teddy Maufe, head of the Malting Barley Growers Confederation
"It was a tough season and I don't think 2007 will be a classic year for malting barley. The price to farmers has gone up from £115 per tonne of barley this harvest to £165-£170/tonne for the next harvest, and once it has gone through the system the merchant, maltster and brewer will see a bigger increase than that.
"Malt is short in the world but farmers in Europe haven't been paid enough for malting barley for 10 years. I used to get £150/tonne for Maris Otter 10 years ago. Then the price crashed and Maris Otter was trading at £90/tonne until the past couple of years when we got it to £100, £105, £115 - so going up to £165-plus is only restoring it to where it should have been and more if we had gone index-linked.
"The reason prices have gone through the roof is that the world is running out of malting barley. Australian farmers have had a poor harvest, poor prices, and cut their area and grown less, which is exactly what they should be doing if a crop is not paying its way.
"We were overproducing until two years ago, but now the market has swung at last from overproduction to under. What we need to do now is get some long-term contracts between growers and maltsters at viable prices. And that is the Holy Grail and always has been for this 10 years in the wilderness. That is what you do in any other industry - you find a supply price they can live with and you can live with. You don't expect people to keep supplying you at a loss.
"Farmers take a long time to address their situation and grow less. It's like turning a supertanker around, getting farmers to change their cropping. We are now finally going into a new, different, more conscious age of which crops pay and which don't."
Tony Redsell, chairman, National Hop Association of England
"It has been a very difficult summer with heavy rain and flooding in some areas. One grower told me he was spraying but the bar of his tractor was under water. But the water did give some good growth through the year, and the UK crop will be of the order of 10 per cent higher than it was last year.
"The price is affected by the world market, not by how many hops UK growers produce. The UK crop is of the order of 20,000-30,000 zentner (1 zentner = 50kg), while the Germans produce 550,000 and the Americans grow 500,000 - we are very small fry.
"The market at the moment is strong - prices have been very low for the past five to six years and growers have just given up throughout the world because prices were so poor. A major German merchant has now declared there is a structural shortage of hops in the world. The price of alpha acid, the bittering value of hops, was £11 per kg three years ago. Today on the spot market it is probably about £50/kg, so there is a very strong spot trade but there is a shortage of hops worldwide .
"I think the market will remain strong for several years now because the growers, having had their fingers burnt over the past five or six years, won't rush in to oversupply too fast again. The strong market will go on for another two or three years at least.
"Our biggest problem at the moment is a difficulty in getting crop protection materials because we are a minor crop and chemical companies wouldn't take out all of the necessary trials to get a licence, because it is an expensive job licensing a chemical for a minor crop.
"We are always having to hang on the coat tails of our European cousins, hoping they have got a material that we can use here."
SIBA provides local beer for all
Local sourcing is the buzz phrase of the moment, and the Society of Independent Brewers is making it easier than ever for any off-licence to stock beers from local brewers with its Direct Delivery Scheme.
SIBA now has more than 400 brewery members and spokesman Michael Hardman expects that number to rise to 500 in the near future. Some of the group's newest members include Greenmill Brewery in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, Offa's Brewery in Oswestry, Shropshire and Elmtree Beers in Snetterton, Norfolk.
Asda and Threshers have already signed up to the Direct Delivery Scheme, and a third major multiple is to trial the programme in the new year.
Hardman says: "All your readers now have the opportunity to get local beers on their shelves by getting in touch with our Direct Delivery Scheme, and the breweries will deliver direct. It is a wonderful system because it cuts right down on red tape, they treat the DDS as though it is one company.
"They can get their beers from anywhere really, but we are plugging local beers because we are very aware of what is happening to the earth's atmosphere at the moment and we want to cut down on beer miles. Having started mainly as an on-trade vehicle it is now performing very well in the off-trade for large customers and small."
Find out more at siba.co.uk.
Get on course
Want to know more about brewing? Brewing Research International runs a range of training courses at Nutfield in Surrey. Upcoming courses include Sustainability in the Brewing Industry on Nov 29, European Labelling on Nov 30 and Introduction to Brewing on Dec 4-5. BRI is to merge with the Campden Chorleywood Food Research Association, a membership-based food and drink research organisation, in January 2008.
Find out more about the BRI and its courses at brewingresearch.co.uk.
