10/17/05 Barley production keeps shrinking

Farm and Ranch October 17, 2005 If you grow barley you are one of a shrinking number of U.S. farmers who are growing much less barley than in the past. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that the 2005 barley crop will be only 212 million bushels, 24% smaller than the year before. In the Pacific Northwest this year barley production totaled 66.7 million bushels, an 18 percent drop from 2004. A hot dry spring contributed to reduced yields. But Joe Glauber, a USDA economist, says this is not just a one-year decline. Glauber: "Barley has been in a long decline. It really started when the flexibility provision started getting into the farm bill back in 1990 even we started seeing a drop in barley acreage. That was accelerated with the 96 farm bill. What you are seeing in a lot of the barley growing regions is that producers have switched to oilseeds. New oilseed varieties have become available that do quite well in the northern Plains. So you have seen a switching there and then just the overall competitiveness in terms of growing barley versus other crops." The Conservation Reserve program also gets some of the blame as do new herbicides which reduce the need for crop rotation. USDA says the barley acreage harvested for grain this year was the lowest since 1890 and the production was the lowest since 1936. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.