There has long been industry speculation that buyers have not been satisfied with the quality of barley out of the bags – now Barley Australia has gone on the record and says growers should look to vertical storage if they want to market malt barley from their on-farm storage.

It is believed germination issues with malt quality barley purchased from grain bags in the past has led to the preference for silo-stored grain.

Barley Australia executive manager Linda Price says the message coming out from the trade is that growers have to preserve the grain’s traits so it's suited for the intended end use.

With this in mind, two marketing members of Barley Australia have indicated they will not be buying malt barley stored long-term in grain bags.

Barley Australia declined to reveal who the two buyers were.

Ms Price says the malting process relies on keeping the barley alive and respiring, meaning maltsters have different requirements from those using barley for feed.

“The process of making malt is dependent on a live barley grain capable of vigorous germination. Only a live barley grain will trigger the cascade of biochemical reactions required to convert barley into malt suitable for brewing,” she says.

Ms Price stressed the importance of not having barley stored in a hot or moist environment, which would reduce the grain’s germination vigour.

“Farmers need to have malt barley in as good a condition as their seed barley for cropping – it’s essentially a similar germination process.”

“Barley for malting is sold on the premise that each individual seed is a living organism and barley purchased as malt is usually traded on a 98pc germination basis.”

Ms Price says the malt barley industry wants the message to get out that malting grade barley must be stored in a cool, dry environment, such as that provided by fixed vertical storage.

She says the industry has no problems with the flexibility grain bags could provide as a logistical solution over the busy harvest period, but the concern lay in longer-term storage.

“The malting industry is always concerned about any factor that may damage germination and as such Barley Australia urges growers to be cautious about storingmalting barley in silo bags for anything other than short term logistics purposes,” Ms Price says.

* Silo and grain bags are used here as generic terms and do not refer to a specific brand of the storage bags.