Evidence of meeting #6 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was malt.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
Looking at the statistics that I get from Stats Canada that I looked at here yesterday, a minute amount is going into France, but other than that, no. And when I say minute, it's a very insignificant amount.
Liberal
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
Yes, they can be but corn is also one of our competitors, so we can't say all the animals would be using barley. But certainly I would say a majority of them would be, yes.
Liberal
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
So the barley will follow where the livestock is going or vice versa, where your barley is being produced. Is it a better conversion than the other grains?
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
Barley?
It depends on whom you talk to. We had a scientist from the Ag research station in Lethbridge who made a presentation to western barley growers last year, and he maintains that the conversion rate on barley is far more efficient than it is on corn. I can't elaborate on that. It would take me all afternoon.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
I talked to some grain growers out there last week and they mentioned that one of their concerns is research. Their sense was that there's a lot of cutting in research at present. Do you see that the barley industry needs a lot more research done on varieties, or is some being done? What is your sense of the whole research puzzle?
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
Certainly, yes, we'd like to see more breeding research done in barley, but I don't think we're in the same difficulty that I consider wheat to be in, and I grow wheat myself too. According to the person we have representing barley at our Barley Council of Canada boardroom, yes, we could make some changes and improvements in varietal registration and breeding of barley, but he said we're certainly not a broken system, if you want to put it that way.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
Thank you very much, Mr. Eyking. Your five minutes are up.
Now we will go to Mr. Payne, please, for five minutes.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for coming. I understand Mr. Otto is now going to be in the new riding of Medicine Hat, so welcome.
I was interested in some of your comments. It has been said that 80% of the barley goes into feed for cattle and pork, and the other 20% is going...is it going into malt, or what's happening there?
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
You did touch on opening the market in Europe and you talked, I believe, about a $120-tonne tariff?
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Up to. So that will be eliminated. Do you see any opportunity, then, to send barley to Europe? I know you said some is going to France right now, but potentially that could open a whole new market, could it not?
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
Potentially, yes.
When we say we're going to ship malt barley to Europe, there are two ways it could go. It could go as raw barley, which is just clean it, put it in a railcar or whatever, and get it into export position. It could also go as a manufactured malt product. What we have to look at here is this: what are the tariffs on our malt companies when they try to ship malt in that direction? I can't answer that question.
Certainly I see opportunities. Will they be every year? No. There will be times when there are shortages of that product here or in Europe. When those opportunities present themselves, that will be an opportunity for the barley industry.
Just to give you an example, three years ago Saudi Arabia could not access their barley from traditional sources, which were Ukraine and Russia. Canada exported a significant amount of barley into Saudi Arabia, because we had the barley.
Those are the kinds of opportunities I see opening up in Europe as we eliminate these tariffs. It puts us on a level playing field, able to compete.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
We know that out west we had some great crops this year. I'm wondering how the barley crop was compared with previous years.
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
I'll give you my own personal experience. We live in a drier part of the world in southern Alberta, and it's the first time on my farm I've grown over 100-bushel-an-acre barley. It all went for malt. Just to give you an idea, it's $6 a bushel; that's what it's locked in at.
I've done this for a number of years now. I have a program I use to pencil out my return on barley. After all my expenses, barley still competes very well with the wheats that I grow on my farm.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Yes, that's extremely good. I'm sure that's right across Alberta. I don't know if you have any comments on that.
Chairman, Barley Council of Canada Working Group
I know there are a lot of smiling farmers.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Well, that's good.
Do you think some more innovative stuff needs to be done in terms of being able to grow higher yields on the barley, or different types of barley, to open up more markets?