The Boortmalt harvest price has now been finalised at €398.38/t. The harvest price was calculated by taking the French malting barley price, the Free-On-Board (FOB) Creil Planet price, at the close of business every Wednesday from 14 April to 22 September.

Irish farmers are paid the equivalent of the French dried price for green barley.

However, this season suppliers delivered barley at record low moisture contents and would have had weight loss as a result of moistures as low as 10.5% in some cases.

The price on 8 September was €352/t. This dropped to €345/t on 15 September and went back up to €350/t on 21 September to finalise the price at €398.38/t.

At present, an energy charge of €12.50/t is due to be taken off this price, which would leave the price at €385.88/t.

A full list of the prices contributing to the average is detailed below. These prices are supplied to the Irish Farmers Association by Boortmalt.

Some farmers have forward sold barley at prices of €250/t and €270/t. They took up these offers before averaging started and at the time it was a sensible decision to make to manage risk.