Problems Brewing as EU Farmers Switch to Biofuels

European beer brewers may face increasingly tight malt supplies later this year as farmers switch to grains for biofuel production, the head of a leading German malt marketing company said on Thursday.

“Malt producers will have to change their thinking and accept that sufficient supplies of malting barley are not going to be automatic and that they will face increasing competition from biofuel producers,” Jochen Mautner, head of Jochen Mautner GmbH, told Reuters.
A survey undertaken by his company estimates that European Union farmers were this year likely to plant two percent less spring barley, which is used for malt production which in turn is a key ingredient in beer brewing.

This is despite current high spring barley prices caused by last summer’s poor crop which would normally have encouraged farmers to expand spring barley plantings.

Instead farmers were believed to have planted more grains for biofuel production.

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