For Robin Appel, managing director of Warminster Maltings, this year’s weather pattern has raised some concerns. And with changing weather patterns come potential changes in the market, too. 

Harvest 2024 has been hailed as the second worst harvest on record, and the worst harvest since the 1980’s. (The latter probably relates to 1984, when much of the English cereal crop was completely flattened to the ground by exceptional storms that crossed the country a couple of weeks ahead of harvest).

This years poor performance is all about crop yields that were never there in the first place, so another serious shortfall, but we are mostly talking about wheat.

Again we can blame the rain, but not an individual storm. Instead, 12 months of persistent precipitations.

As far as I am concerned, it started raining last October (2023), and has not stopped since, and the guys at the Met Office are now repeating as much.

So, not surprisingly, plantings of Winter barley – sown end of Sept/early Oct. – were reduced. I do not think this has had any real detrimental impact on the brewing industry.

Coincidentally, at the same time we saw a ‘correction’ to the demand for Maris Otter barley (Autumn sown), due to a downturn in demand for ‘Otter malt in North America.

Instead, the figures suggest that any Winter barley not planted, was turned over to Spring barley. Winter barley production across England is down 700,000 tonnes in 2024 (compared to 2023),

Spring barley up 900,000 tonnes. Across Scotland it has been a similar story, the Winter crop down 7%, the Spring crop up 4%.

But this Spring outcome from English farms was a close run thing! For example, the perfect ‘window’ for planting Spring barley in the south of England is February 15th to March 15th.

But this was never possible, this year, with the rain constantly getting in the way. Instead, for many farmers, lSpring sowing never really got going until the end of April.

Even then, seed went into less than perfect seedbeds, and farmers prayed for the rains to return. Come May, the rains did return, and the barley crops eventually established well despite being more than a month behind schedule.

The month of June was also kind to the barley crop, short periods of sunshine (interspersed with more rain), but no heatwaves to stunt leaf and stem development.

The Winter barleys made it to harvest almost on schedule, mid to third week of July, but the early samples were not as bold as expected, due to lack of sun. But later harvested crops did improve, to being very acceptable.

Grain nitrogen content was a ‘stand out’ feature, being at the lower end of the preferred range (1.40 – 1.65%), but with much of the Winter variety Craft being even lower still, rendering a lot of it unsuitable for brewing.

The Spring barleys remained lucky, the continued unsettled weather allowing for an extended growing season stretching the harvest date to the third week of August.

All the wet has probably contributed to the boldness of the grain, and, again, low grain nitrogen, albeit mostly well within the preferred range (1.40 – 1.65%).

The total English barley crop in 2024 is estimated to be a little short of 5 million tonnes, with Scotland contributing a further 2 million tonnes (1.7 million tonnes of Spring barley).

The U.K. malting industry as a whole requires just 2 million tonnes from the total crop of 7 million tonnes.

So there is no real shortage of barley, the malting market just has to pick it’s way through the available crop, seeking out bold samples of the right variety, with an acceptable nitrogen content, plenty of germinative capacity, and germinative energy.

But this year’s weather pattern has raised some concerns, and precipitated speculation that perhaps, after all, we may have misunderstood the impact of climate change on our British Isles.

Ten to fifteen years ago, all the talk was the promise of something akin to a Mediterranean climate, and all across the south of England, once prime malting barley ground was quickly turned over to vineyards, including some famous French names determined to establish their own domains here.

Now, the suggestion is that perhaps our famous Maritime Climate is instead destined to become more wet, even more Maritime you might say. So how will that impact U.K. cereal production?

Well, that will not suit the wheat crop. Wheat prefers weather more akin to a Continental Climate – long sunshine hours and fierce heat in the summer.

Barley, on the other hand, belongs to a Maritime Climate, and as we have seen this year, could continue to thrive within our shores.

But barley cannot attain the same sort of crop yields that wheat can, so without wheat the overhead costs of cereal (barley) production will likely escalate.

So, when the farmer’s cereal crop of choice becomes Winter barley or Spring barley, the demand for malt will almost certainly need to be a bit stronger than it is today. I am not talking about volume, I am talking about value!