Boortmalt is writing to all its malt barley growers with this year's offer. Forward trading can now commence for the 2015 season.

It follows the unanimous decision of the IFA’s executive council to endorse the proposals outlined last week at a growers meeting in Bunclody, Co Wexford.

The deal was recommended by the malt barley negotiation team, although not unanimously. The two recently elected members, Colm Fingleton and James Kelly, had indicated at the Bunclody meeting that they did not endorse the proposals.

Following the meeting, farmers contacted Boortmalt wanting to forward-sell grain.

Meanwhile, some prominent Wexford growers were threatening to withdraw IFA membership and/or grain levies in protest at the current negotiated position. Opposition has previously been concentrated in Kildare/Laois.

The key concession gained in the last round allows an option to delay the date that harvest price is determined until late October.

This would have avoided the bottom of the market last year. Also, the €15/t gap between the malt price and the guideline MATIF wheat price will be reduced on a sliding scale when MATIF is €180/t or below. It would have been worth €10/t in 2014 if in effect.

Full top table

No one could accuse the IFA of not taking malting barley seriously. The top table at last Wednesday’s meeting in Bunclody featured president Eddie Downey, general secretary Pat Smith, grain chair Liam Dunne, grain executive secretary Fintan Conway, as well as Mark Browne and three other members of the malt barley committee he chairs.

It may well have been a case of too many cooks spoils the broth as the meeting was fractious and frequently bad-tempered. Downey chaired and was drawn into sharp exchanges with a number of farmers.

Most of these were critical of the fact that the proposals presented closely resembled those previously rejected by meetings in Enniscorthy and Athy.

Downey said the proposals were the result of exhaustive negotiations and were the best achievable deal for the coming year.

The system of selling forward is complicated, possibly overly so. Up to three-quarters of contract tonnage can be traded forward. A maximum 20% can be sold forward. A further 54% of contract tonnage can be hedged forward in a number of tranches, but a penalty applies if it is not delivered – effectively the loss of the malt bonus.

Many farmers lost heavily through forward-selling in 2012 – the first year the system was widely utilised. The price rose sharply at harvest, meaning the forward price compared poorly with the harvest price.

In addition, large volumes of grain failed the Boortmalt specification, so only a feed price was achieved.

Farmers who traded forward again in 2013 and 2014 experienced the opposite effect, with forward prices over €30 ahead last year, but only 5,000t of the 80,000t contracted was traded forward in 2014.

If currently operating, malt sold forward would deliver a significant margin over current feed prices. The green price quoted on Wednesday evening was €174/t to sell forward or €169/t to hedge. Feed barley was making €130-€135/t. However, there are consistent calls to scrap the forward-selling system and deliver a green price with a margin over costs and/or feed barley. The negotiators say that Boortmalt and Diageo are wedded to forward-trading.

A proposal for the meeting to vote on the deal was ruled out of order by Eddie Downey, as only some growers were present.

A call for all those wishing to reject the deal to stand up was made from the floor, but less than 30 of the 125 present stood up.