The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has welcomed the announcement this week of grain prices by Glanbia, saying they will be positive for the tillage sector.
Glanbia confirmed on Wednesday that it would pay its members €210/t for green feed barley and €220/t for green feed wheat for harvest 2021, “with premium grains delivering strong additional returns for growers”.
Mark Browne, chair of the IFA’s grain committee, said the price announcement was “encouraging”.
“With the planted cereal area increasing by 3.7% this year, it is very encouraging to see the tillage sector expanding again. The high grain prices of harvest 2021 provide a much-needed boost in confidence for tillage farmers after several difficult seasons.”
Browne also welcomed the decision from Boortmalt to pay a final price of €237.67/t for malting barely this year.
“The strong cereal yields experienced in 2021 are expected to produce a national harvest above 2.3 million tonnes, a significant increase on the 1.9 million tonnes produced in 2020,” Browne noted.
“Grain quality is also excellent in 2021, with high bushel weights recorded. Grain merchants and end-users must seek to maximise usage of Irish grain in feed rations over the coming months.”
However, despite the harvest results, the IFA grain chair noted that rising input costs are “casting a degree of uncertainty for growers as they start preparations for harvest 2022”.
“With fertiliser and energy prices set to increase significantly, growers need to seriously look at their production costs and consider the forward grain prices available,” Browne concluded.
Glanbia said this week that its grain team “has worked with farmers to substantially expand the area sown to value-added premium crops” and that more than 40% of the total grain intake delivers a market premium for growers.
Over €2 million in premiums over and above the feed price will be paid to farmers for delivering food-grade and other value-added crops in Harvest 2021, according to Glanbia.