A Co. Laois farmer has said it is “now or never” for a time to plant his crop of spring barley for this year.
In his 20 years of farming, this is only the second time David Walsh-Kemmis has sown the crop in the month of April.
Two types of barley are grown on the malting barley farm; distilling barley, grown for Waterford distillery and brewing barley, used in Walsh-Kemmis’ own brewery, Ballykilcavan Brewery, near Stradbally.
Walsh-Kemmis told Agriland that currently, the brewing barley “is a problem,” but he added “the distilling barley is a real problem at this stage.
“If you can sow that in February, great, but for us, realistically the first week in March is when we’d be aiming to get it in.”
He said this has meant that the farm is now running “four weeks late already” as weather conditions have made it impossible to sow the crop.
Attempting to sow
The Laois farmer said that “out of desperation more than anything else” an attempt was made this week to sow the crop.
Half of a field was sown before rain began, and the drill began to block up with wet clay.
Walsh-Kemmis said that due to the late sowing date, the crop they would eventiually harvest from it wouldn’t “be the best crop in the world.
“It was now or never. If we didn’t get it in yesterday, I am not convinced that we would get it in at all.
“It’s one of those things, if we had another four or five hours of dry weather, we would have got it sown.
“We’ve never been in this situation before. We’ve got the fields ploughed, so I presume we have to sow something into them.
“Are we into feed barley, do we put in a fodder crop, do we put it into grass for a while? I genuinely don’t know what were going to do with it,” he added.
Walsh-Kemmis explained that once the middle of April passes, malting barley on his land “doesn’t really work”.
With fertiliser and seed bought, his fields ploughed and rolled, the Laois farmer has invested considerable time and resources into attempting to grow the crop.
The scarcity of seed has meant Walsh-Kemmis has sourced 80% of his seed from Italy this year.
Desirable conditions
Walsh-Kemmis explained low protein barley is desirable for distilling.
He said: “The best way to get it low protein is to get in as early as possible, so it means the plant has more time to develop the roots, that means it more likely to develop more side shoots, which means youre going to get more heads.
“The more heads you have, the more grains you have, the more the nitrogen gets diluted among all those different heads, so that means your protein levels are going to be lower.
“The longer its in the ground, the more chance the nitrogen in the soil is going to be used to grow the plant, rather than sort of a big late kick of it going up into the into the head and forming protein in the head as well,” he added.
Sowing in early February would be “ideal” he explained, but he said this would be rare, adding that having the crop sown before March 10 would give farmers “a reasonable chance of getting it at the right specification”.
Walsh-Kemmis is seeking four days in a row without any rain in order to successfully sow his crop of barley.
Explaining that his land is on “good dry ground” that will “dry out very quickly,” these four days without rain have not arrived.
“Every time it’s got to just about being ready, it starts raining again. So it’s never dried out to the point where we would consider really going in with it.
“We’re pretty sure we’re not going to get anything done to the next ten days, because it’s going to take that long to dry out again after whatever happened this week,” he added.
Therefore, with mid-April approaching as the nearest time that sowing may be completed, depending on the weather, Walsh-Kemmis said that at that stage, it is “very unlikely” that malting barley will be grown to spec for distilling.
Harvesting the crop
With August 10 being the normal harvesting date for his crop of malting barley, Walsh-Kemmis has estimated that his yield will be down by 15% due to the late sowing date.
The small area that he has sown has meant that if the other half of the field remaining to be sowed has seed put in, he said it will mean there will be “two separate crops in terms of management” to work with.
“If we do get it sowed now, it will have to get absolutely perfect growing conditions right up to harvest to have stand any chance of meeting the quality spec,” he added.