Spring barley growers are urged to think more of malt

摘要

New spring barley growers are being urged to treat their crops as if they were destined for malting and to take any premium as a bonus. Growers are advised to get nitrogen fertiliser on as early as possible and aim for malting as there is little yielddownside if the crop ends up in the feed bin. The area of spring barley is set to soar to the highest level since the late 1980s, after many growers failed to drill all their winter crops in the wet autumn. Most spring barley varieties are malting ones,so as long as nitrogen is applied early many crops could make malting with no yield penalty. "Treat it as a malting crop and if you get a premium then that is a bonus," Tim Mayhew, agronomy services manager at farming group Velcourt, tells Farmers Weekly. His experience of growing malting barley in southern England is that all nitrogen needs to be applied by the end of the first week of April, and his crops always go for malting.