Chris Singer has moved to growing high-nitrogen spring malting barley on some of his thin hungry land to get on top of blackgrass, earn a price premium and see an early start to harvest.

He is set to drill his seventh crop of the French-bred variety Explorer this spring for the brewer of Budweiser beer, and is following it with a cover crop as part of his sustainable farming policy.

The brewer looks for barley with a grain nitrogen of 1.75-2.05%, higher than the normal maltsters’ needs, and so it can offer a good profitable spring-sown crop for those on non-traditional malting barley land and also help to control blackgrass.

Mr Singer says the barley variety followed by a clover/vetch cover crop mix has performed well, and it has been grown for four years continuously on some of the poorer land on the Buckinghamshire estate he manages.

“We have to be sustainable going forward, and the combination of Explorer barley and cover crops is sustainable,” he tells Farmers Weekly.

See also: How to grow a better spring malting barley crop

Production costs

The crop is more profitable than growing feed spring barley with the same costs of production, and competes well with the gross margins of second winter wheats.

In fact, with input costs of seed, fertiliser and sprays amounting to £384/ha and with an average yield of 6.25t/ha, his growing costs for Explorer are only just over £61/t, before fixed costs are taken into account.

He first started growing 30ha of Explorer in 2015 when contracts were first launched, and now is looking to drill 195ha this coming spring at Carington Estates, which has 1,400ha of land under arable cropping.

The estate stretches across Buckinghamshire with soils ranging from wet clays to chalky loams on the Chilterns and is based at Bledlow, just south of Aylesbury. It grows spring and winter wheat, spring barley and maize, with grassland and also some land in environmental schemes.

Malting contracts

Explorer barley contracts have been recently adjusted and now offer growers a guaranteed £15/t premium over feed barley at 1.75-2.05% grain nitrogen, while the price will not fall below the price of traditional brewing spring barley varieties Propino and Planet.

His five-year average yield of 6.25t/ha is a touch below feed barley yields, but this is more than offset by the higher grain price, and Mr Singer has always made the Budweiser grain nitrogen specifications.

This is a relief as many maltsters look for grain below 1.65% nitrogen, and on his land it would be difficult to achieve this low nitrogen grain.

The early maturity of the variety is also important, in order to get an early start to harvest on the estate ranging across 50 miles with only a three-strong workforce, and the spring barley is the first crop to be harvested in the second half of July

“Explorer helps us to spread the workload as it is early to harvest. In fact, it is almost like growing winter barley,” he says.

Grower group

He is part of about 220 farmers growing Explorer, who produce some 85,000t of barley annually for Budweiser, who have joined up with agronomy group Agrii, grain trader Viterra (formerly known as Glencore Agriculture*) and maltsters Crisp and Boortmalt to put together malting barley contracts.

Land destined for Explorer is either minimum tilled or direct drilled as the estate has moved away from inversion tillage, with little ploughing done in the past five years, and the crop is treated little differently to a feed barley.

Drilling ideally is in late March and sowing rates have traditionally been 350-375 seeds/sq m, with 140kg/ha of nitrogen fertiliser applied. However, Mr Singer is likely to adjust to 400 seeds and 130kg/ha of nitrogen for this spring to boost ear numbers and keep grain nitrogen down.

“On these thin soils, we have to make sure we get the right number of ears,” he says.

Some 50% of the nitrogen fertiliser is applied at drilling along with phosphate and potash, and then the remainder of the nitrogen spread as soon as the tramlines are visible in the crop.

Fast-growing variety

One thing Mr Singer has learned with his Agrii agronomist Steve Baker is the need to apply the plant growth regulator (PGR) chlormequat (Adjust) soon after drilling at the two-leaf stage to manipulate this fast-growing variety.

“Explorer is long in the straw and very quick-growing, so we are keen to encourage root growth and  maintain plenty of shoots,” says Mr Baker.

Weed control is conducted with tri-allate (Avadex) to control wild oats, and a sulfonylurea herbicide for broad-leaved weed control.

Fungicide use is a standard two-spray spring barley programme, with the SDHI bixafen and azole prothioconazole used at T1, along with a second dose of PGR consisting of chlormequat and trinexapac-ethyl (Moddus).

The T2 spray is prothioconazole and a strobilurin, while both fungicide sprays contain trace elements such as manganese and magnesium.

With glyphosate used pre-harvest to limit brackling, top yields have pushed towards 7.5t/ha, and have fallen towards 5t/ha on the estate’s poorer flinty soils. Straw is chopped in two out of three years to help improve the soil’s organic matter.

“The £15/t-plus premium is attractive, but so is the early maturity as growing other spring barley varieties would cause a bottleneck at harvest,” he says.

Barley for Budweiser

Budweiser is owned by the world’s biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, which brews nearly one-third of the world’s beer, and it uses Explorer barley to brew Budweiser in the UK.

The Explorer contract has proved popular on heavy land farms across southern central England not suited to growing traditional low-nitrogen malting barley and where a spring-sown crop is very useful in controlling grassweeds.

The brewer uses 70% malting barley and 30% rice for its Budweiser beer and since the starch-rich rice has a very low protein, or nitrogen content, then high-nitrogen barley can be used to compensate.

The brewer also makes other beers such as Beck’s, Stella Artois and Corona around the world and operates two UK breweries at Magnor in south Wales and Samlesbury in Lancashire.

*Glencore Agriculture was rebranded Viterra last year following its spin off from commodities giant Glencore. Viterra is the name of the Canada-based firm whose acquisition in 2012 helped Glencore become a leading international grain merchant.