It seems that no grain price will be agreed until the dying days of September. Both Glanbia and Dairygold will not set their harvest price until next week at the earliest.

Farmers can only hope that the continuing slide in feed prices stops, as €130/t now seems likely to be the best base green barley price farmers can hope for. On-account payments have been made by most co-ops and merchants.

Last week, Boortmalt confirmed that the price they pay for contracted malt barley would be €146/t. This price is below the €152/t being paid for surplus grain, a sign of how markets have continued to fall in recent weeks.

As much as €180/t was available for forward trading, but only about 5,000t was either hedged or sold forward.

Farmers do not trust the system following their experience of 2012, when markets soared at harvest price, rendering forward sold grain prices relatively less attractive. This was combined with quality issues at harvest that saw many farmers unable to fulfil the quantity sold forward at the required quality specification, and being hit with penalties as a result. Ironically, this year the opposite would have happened, with the majority of grain meeting the new and more stringent quality specs introduced for 2014, and a €35/t forward price advantage.

Pat O’Toole