From early on at the Irish Farmers' Association’s (IFA) national malting barley meeting on Monday night 10 March, Stuart Sands of Boortmalt made a significant point.He said: “The relationship between the farmer, the malster and the brewer is distinctively important.”
From early on at the Irish Farmers' Association’s (IFA) national malting barley meeting on Monday night 10 March, Stuart Sands of Boortmalt made a significant point.
He said: “The relationship between the farmer, the malster and the brewer is distinctively important.”
He explained that all of those three parties have a responsibility to work to grow the Irish drinks sector.
He also made it clear that he is aware that the amount of land under tillage production is tight and needs to be maintained for consistency of supply.
Later in the meeting, he said that Boortmalt and the farmers probably see things very similarly. He was responding to a point made by farmer Shay Duggan, who sits on the IFA’s malting barley committee.
Duggan asked the room: “Should Boortmalt and the farmers join together and go to the end user to talk about price?
“What galls an awful lot of farmers and people in the country is you see a price increase on a pint of Guinness or a pint of Heineken, vodka, whatever it is and you wonder what are we getting out of it? Very little. What’s Boortmalt getting out of it? Very little.”
Millions of visitors
He said that the millions of visitors to the Guinness Storehouse spend money on the “iconic pint of Guinness”, which requires farmers to grow Irish barley and Boortmalt to malt that barley.
However, he claimed neither party is being paid significantly for their role in the process.
Duggan added that Diageo is possibly making money and asked should Boortmalt and the farmers join together to change the pricing structure to have an end-user-related price.
“I’m very tired of hearing for years and years what barley is making in Bruges,” he said.
“There is one thing I want to remind you, it’s not Irish barley. It never will be Irish barley and it should never be in a pint of Guinness or any other Irish product that claims to be an Irish drink.
“We’re producing the best Irish malt in the world. We’re the only ones that can produce it. You’re the only ones who can malt it, as far as we’re concerned here in this country, and we should all be sticking up for one another.
“I think maybe the fight has to go a little bit to the end user, because they’re left out of this argument here tonight.
"They’re not sitting at that top table. They’re not telling us why we can’t have an extra cent out of the 6c that they put on not so long ago or the same for whiskey, but we’ll hear about all the bad stories.
“That narrative has to be changed,” he said, adding that €230/t is not a sustainable price for malting barley if you look at diesel, fertiliser and land rental prices.
“We need to all protect the Irish malting barley industry and if we don’t start shortly, it won’t be long leaving us behind.”
You can read more on the meeting here.
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