Scoular introduces barley program

It’s old news that barley is Idaho’s other number-one crop, and most of that is for malting. Idaho growers plant around a half a million acres of barley every year, most of it in eastern Idaho and the Magic Valley. Scoular, one of the nation’s oldest dealers in seed, grain and other agricultural products, has a new program to show the advantages of including other barley types into a farm’s crop rotation plan.

Unlike the Anheuser-Busch grower’s program, which focuses exclusively on malting barley using its own proprietary seed varieties, the Scoular program helps farmers pick and choose among different barley types and helps farmers access new markets beyond the world of malting.

MVP market and risk tools

Scoular’s new program is called Barley MVP, which is run out of the firm’s Twin Falls office. “Barley MVP gives farmers access to Scoular’s risk management and commodity tools,” Andy Hohwieler told the Idaho Business Review. Hohwieler is the Scoular trade unit manager for Twin Falls.

“It’s a holistic approach to the barley market…The tools give farmers a look at seed varieties they may have overlooked, and access to additional markets,” he added.

The MVP program will supply high-yield drought-resistant barley varieties and access to Scoular’s global marketing tools to connect them to new markets. With the overwhelming emphasis on malting varieties in Idaho, Hohwieler explained that farmers could be missing out on other profitable barley types, like barley for livestock feed, where demand is currently outstripping supply: “What we want to do is introduce farmers to the potential of using a feed or food barley where they might not have considered using barley in their rotation before.”

One of the goals of the MVP program is to inform farmers about feed and food barleys. Scoular first announced the program on Aug. 4, which would give growers time to investigate the MVP program in time for fall planting. “Barley as a rotation crop is not at the top of the list,” Hohwieler said, “and we want to change that and bring it back to the forefront.”

More barley acres

Hohwieler believes that the inclusion of livestock and human food market barley types into a farmer’s crop rotation could potentially add up to 50,000 acres of barley in Idaho over the next five years, above and beyond the half million acres already dedicated to malting barley. Idaho growers working with Scoular converted 12,000 acres last year to producing feed and food barley varieties.

“We don’t expect those additional acres will take away from malt acres in Idaho,” Idaho Barley Commission Executive Director Laura Wilder told the Idaho Farm Bureau. “It will add to current Idaho barley acres…The company’s expanded focus on barley and initiatives around their new barley protein concentrate facility (in Jerome), as well as feed barley and food barley, will increase total Idaho barley acres.”

New plant in Jerome

Barley MVP is part of the firm’s Idaho barley initiative, which also includes the construction of a new $13 million barley facility in Jerome that will produce a barley protein concentrate for the aquaculture and pet food industries as well as a high-energy liquid feed supplement for cattle. The 15,000-square-foot facility is scheduled for completion this fall.

The Scoular Company was founded in 1892 by George Scoular. It was run by the Scoular family until 1967, when it was sold. The firm is still privately held. The firm is one of the largest grain storage and handling companies in the country. Scoular has approximately 1,000 employees, 24 offices and 90 storage, handling and procession facilities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Scoular has an office in Preston; elevators in Grace, Bancroft, Michaud and Aberdeen, and a terminal and processing facility in Jerome.