Media Releases
14th April 2011
Barley Australia Opposes the Proposed Carbon Tax
CARBON TAX WILL HURT AUSTRALIAN FARMERS.
Barley Australia Ltd, Australia’s peak body for barley, has expressed its concern at the Labor Government’s intention to impose a carbon tax on the agricultural industry.
This tax will hurt Australia’s agriculture overall, which is one of the country’s key industry sectors. A carbon tax will have real and significant impact on the barley industry in particular, along with the all other areas of agricultural production.
The Australian barley industry accounts for around 8 million tonnes of grain in a normal year, of which some 4 million tonnes are exported. The malting barley segment in particular is a major “value-adding” industry in Australia, with around 1,000,000 tonnes of malting barley converted to malt. Of this, around 600,000 tonnes of malt is exported into the Asian regions, with earnings of approximately $300,000,000.
Malting barley and energy are the major cost inputs in the production of malt, so any tax which raises these costs substantially threatens our ability to compete with malt supplied into Asia from Europe, China, and Canada.
A carbon tax will impact on farm inputs, especially energy, with the resultant increases in farm costs affecting the export value of malt, with knock-on effects on jobs, the demand for malt and the demand for barley.
The government has in part acknowledged the problems that such a tax will have on agricultural production and has amended its Carbon Farming Initiative, but the government must now address the broader issues of the carbon tax on the farming community generally.
Australia’s farmers are world-renowned as leaders in high quality, efficient and sustainable food and fibre production. The Australia barley and malting industry has worked extremely hard over the past decades to establish itself as a reliable and competitive supplier of barley to a range of key markets from the Middle East to all countries of Asia.
A punitive tax on carbon emissions, which will not be imposed on our competitors in China, Europe and North America, will definitely have an adverse effect on the market dynamics of this commodity and place Australian exports at risk.
18th November 2010
Barley Australia Announces New Food Grade Classification
Barley Australia has today announced the creation of a new Food Barley classification for barley varieties which have not met malting accreditation standards, but at the same time, have the quality potential to be utilized in the marketplace for purposes other than stockfeed.
The decision to create this new Food classification was precipitated by the recent decision of the Malting and Brewing Industry Barley Technical Committee (MBIBTC) to recommend to Barley Australia that the variety Hindmarsh should not be awarded malting accreditation status in Australia, as already announced.
Whilst Hindmarsh has failed to meet the standards set by MBIBTC for official malting status, Hindmarsh does have limited demand in markets where a feed classification (the only current alternative to malt) would invalidate it as a variety that could be processed for human consumption.
Mr Neil Barker, the Executive Manager of Barley Australia said that the creation of this classification is an appropriate response to a diversifying market, where customers can now be offered a choice of barley qualities which are more descriptive of the purposes for which they are intended, rather than either Malt or Feed. A number of new varieties are being developed specifically for food rather than malting and this new classification would enable grain marketers and farmers to extract a potential premium where otherwise the barley would end up in the feed bin.
Hindmarsh has shown potential to be a variety suitable for Shochu production in the Japanese market, which currently requires the barley to have minimum malt classification. It is Barley Australia’s view that the new food classification will enable Hindmarsh and other future varieties with unique food processing or biochemical characteristics to be recognized independently to the current malt and feed barley classifications.
“The Food Classification will create opportunities for both growers and marketers to cater for these specialist markets” Mr Barker said
Barley Australia members have agreed that these types of barley varieties will need to meet all of the other physical quality requirements which apply to accredited malting barleys, such as protein, test weight, screenings and retention, before they can be accepted into Food Barley segregations.
Barley Australia acknowledges that segregations of this type will be at the discretion of the marketers and market demand, but that this new classification creates a segregation opportunity that otherwise would have been lost.
11th November 2010
Hindmarsh Falls Short of Malt Barley Accreditation
Hindmarsh, a barley variety released in 2007 and now becoming increasingly popular in many regions of eastern Australia, has failed to meet the standards set by the Malting and Brewing Industry Barley Technical Committee (MBIBTC) for accreditation as a malting barley variety in its second and final year of evaluation. MBIBTC considers that, as Hindmarsh does not have the required malting quality characteristics to warrant it being granted accreditation, the committee will not be recommending to Barley Australia that it should be granted official malting barley variety status in Australia.
The MBIBTC decision follows the completion of recent tests which indicated that malt quality was regularly compromised by unacceptably high wort beta glucan and viscosity levels, which, during the brewing process, can result in difficulties in the separation of the wort from the mash and create problems with beer filtration.
The variety was admitted to the Barley Australia varietal accreditation program in 2008 and successfully progressed from stage one to stage two evaluation in 2009 on the recommendation of members of the MBIBTC. During deliberations at this time, the MBIBTC committee was aware that earlier small scale malting trials conducted prior to official admission into the Barley Australia varietal accreditation program did expose some of these quality problems, but they did not emerge in the first year of official evaluation on a limited commercial tonnage. Unfortunately, they re emerged this year, indicating a lack of consistency in the results obtained from year to year for this variety, which is also of significant concern to maltsters.
Normally, Barley Australia announces the results of malting barley evaluations in March each year, but given the significant increase in the plantings of this variety, and the high expectations riding on Hindmarsh in achieving malting status, the organization has decided to announce the MBIBTC decision not to recommend malting status for this variety immediately.
The Executive Manager of Barley Australia Mr Neil Barker said that the barley varietal accreditation program is extremely important to the industry, as it ensures that only those varieties which meet the required standards set by MBIBTC are granted official malting variety status. One of the primary conditions for accreditation is that any new varieties recognized as malt varieties must be superior to the varieties they are intended to replace. Australia’s competitors operate similar accreditation systems for malting barley, and it is important that standards are maintained so that our reputation for the supply of high quality malting barley destined for malting and beer brewing markets can be maintained.
Mr Barker did point out however that under current marketing arrangements, there was no reason why grain companies could not market specially segregated varieties to any customer for any purpose if a demand existed for those varieties irrespective of their malting accreditation status. The main purpose of Barley Australia accreditation system is to ensure the supply of high quality, high value, accredited malting barley varieties to discriminating and quality conscious buyers which can compete with varieties supplied by our competitors.