Background Cereals
Is spring wheat or barley preferred?
Several growers already made the choice to plant fewer potatoes last autumn. Instead, in most cases, they have decided to sow more winter wheat. Other arable farmers were deterred by the lower contract prices for potatoes and only decided to plant less in the winter. They are too late to sow winter grain and are looking for another crop. What is the alternative?
Partly due to the high grain prices on the futures market, summer grain can be a good alternative. The yield is of course lower than that of potatoes. As a dormant crop in an intensive cultivation plan, it does offer the necessary advantages from an agricultural point of view. With summer grain, the choice is between barley and wheat. Both have their pros and cons. Both crops can compete with each other in terms of financial yield and cultivation costs.
Barley can still be sown late
Summer barley can be sown until the end of April/beginning of May. Spring wheat should be sown as early as possible for maximum yield. Sowing of spring wheat is possible until mid-April, but then the highest yields are no longer achieved. Spring barley is therefore preferable if it is not possible to sow until later. Spring wheat is less susceptible to moderate or poor structure. Spring wheat also offers more options for weed control. If the field is heavily trafficked or polluted in the fall, spring wheat may also be preferable for late sowing.
The fertilization standards for summer grain are on the tight side. For a top yield, more nitrogen is needed than is legally allowed. Summer wheat offers good options for applying animal manure. With summer barley, this is discouraged by most information officers. The harvest of spring barley is earlier than spring wheat. This makes it possible in many cases to grow a good green manure after barley.
Yield does not differ much
In recent years, the hectare yields of spring barley are increasingly approaching that of spring wheat. Statistics from Statistics Netherlands show that in 2020 an average of 6,4 tons of spring wheat per hectare was threshed and 6,2 tons of spring barley per hectare. The dry spring in 2020 was a major obstacle to get the crops going. In 'normal' years the average yields are around 7 tons and peaks of (far) above 8 tons per hectare are certainly not uncommon.
A brewing premium can be achieved by choosing a malting barley. The premium varies per year and per customer. In general, the price of malting barley is approximately equal to the feed/summer wheat price. Agrifirm's grain pool paid a basic premium of approximately €160 per tonne last year for both wheat and barley. In the pool, CZAV paid €166 per tonne for spring wheat and €170 per tonne for malting barley. As far as price is concerned, spring barley and wheat are not very different from each other. Which crop is preferable therefore mainly depends on the conditions on the plot and the grower's previous experience.
Jurphaas Lugtenburg
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