Offaly farmers Ross and Alison Hendy are the 2019 Glanbia grain suppliers of 2019. Their crop of food-grade oats was judged to be the best across 10 category winners from eight counties.

The winning crop was of the venerable Barra variety, averaging 60kph at 16.3% moisture. Category awards were presented to growers of malt, seed, green feed and dried feed for barley, contracted winter feed barley, green feed and dried feed for wheat, seed wheat, food grade and green feed oats.

Price

Glanbia chair Martin Keane highlighted the fact that the average grain price paid was over €172/t (VAT included), when bonuses and co-op top ups were taken into account.

Glanbia’s feed barley base price of €128/t for non co-op members saw the IFA mount a week-long protest, which resulted in some price increases.

Keane said that Glanbia bought 205,000t of grain in 2019, with almost 40% receiving premium payments. Glanbia will be buying a further 60,000t of 2019 crop dry from storage. He commended the growers present for the quality of their crops in a difficult harvest.

“It is clear that the production of high-quality grains continues to be of paramount importance to our growers,” he said.

Aoife Murphy, Glanbia’s director of ingredients, explained how Glanbia’s €15m investment in a new research and development facility at Ballyragget is designed to develop products from dairy and tillage producers and to create synergies between both sides of the business. As an example of the potential that exists in the development, Glanbia last year launched “good-to-go” Avonmore porridge.

This microvaveable product combines Glanbia milk with its gluten-free oats. With sales already over 2,000 units a week, availability is steadily expanding across most of the major retailers.

Demand

Glanbia’s gluten-free oats are proving to be an ongoing success story, with Aoife Murphy telling the attendees at the awards ceremony that they cannot currently meet demand for the crop for customers, and intend to increase acreage again this year.

This year, Glanbia will contract commercial quantities of quinoa, the first ancient grain to be commercially grown by a major merchant.