Farmer Focus: Seed dresser prevents £50,000 malting barley loss
© Phil Weedon I sold 1,000t of Laureate spring malting barley at an excellent price of more than £210/t for movement for September, October and November, but only half has been moved to date.
The merchant I sold to claims it has been unable to get fixings from Boortmalt to deliver it.
My barley this year was split between two farms, one being heavy clay on the east coast of Lincolnshire, the other in the Wolds on a soil type of clay over chalk at 300m altitude.
See also: What the new winter malting barley variety offers to growers
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When I started delivering the barley back in October it came from the Marsh Farm on the east coast. This went through with no problems and the quality correct to the contract.
However, crops from the Wold farm dropped in quality and failed on screenings.
Malting barley screenings over a 2.5mm sieve require a minimum retention of 85% barley, but my sample was just 75% retention over this 2.5mm sieve, which wasn`t good enough.
A decision had to be made. Do I take an £80/t loss on the remaining 600t, which would be nearly a £50,000 loss, or get in local seed specialists GFP to dress the barley at about £10/t, totalling £6,000.
The decision was a no-brainer, and GFP arrived with a lorry and dresser.
We started the process of tipping the trailer of barley into the dresser which takes it first through a de-awner, then to a cylinderic blower, followed by a barrel sieve, and finally a gravity separator.
We sent a sample off to the lab to check results and were pleased to see retention had improved from 75% to 93%, meaning we had hit the maltsters quality.
We are now delivering the barley with no problems and hitting all the quality specifications.
Although it was a slow process, only doing about 120t/day, it was rewarding, and I would thoroughly recommend it.
