Heavy rains of September ‘the last straw’ for Galway’s grain farmers’
“BAD yields, bad prices and rotten bad weather,” is how Galway IFA Grain Committee Chairman, John Daly, summed up the harvest season of 2016.
A difficult year for Galway grain growers has gotten much worse over the past week with the heavy rains and ensuring poor ground conditions, making harvesting next to impossible.
“The winter barley has been got but there’s at least 50% of the spring crop yet to be harvested and things are looking good for it. At this stage it’s just a salvage job,” said John Daly.
He estimates that yields this year – between 2.5 and 3 tonnes to the acre – are back by about 20% on last year’s harvest while there is also no good news on the prices front.
“We will be pressing hard to secure a price of €135 per tonne [barley at 20% moisture] but that’s not going to be easy, and even at that it’s very poor money.
“As bad as things were with yield and price, if the weather had picked up, then at least grain growers would be getting the chance to harvest their crops.
“September is turning out to be a very wet month and that’s the last thing we need. Already it has all the signs of being a long winter – ground conditions are turning very soft,” said John Daly.
Globally, the downward pressure on grain prices continues. Record yields across parts of America and Russia are contributing to an over-supply in the market.
Russia, with a 72 million wheat harvest this year, has implemented a zero tax rate on wheat exports, to help ‘move on’ the crop, a move that will swell an already bloated market.
More locally, oats is expected to fetch about a ‘tenner’ more per tonne than barley, coming in at around the €140 to €145 mark.
Galway grain farmers grow an estimated 10,000 acres of corn but already farmers and merchants expect this figure to shrink significantly next year with most conacre growers likely to ‘pull plant’ after a series of loss making years.