Monday 27 May 2013

UK barley production 1857 - 1927

Here's a new topic for me: barley. I've written plenty about malt before, but not about the stuff it's made from.

I was going to try to see what percentage of the malt used in Britain was made from foreign barley. Then I remembered something rather important: barley wasn't just used for making beer. A fair amount of the barley available in Britain was used for animal feed. Working out how much imported barley was used in malting is impossible using the figures I have.

What got me thinking about barley was a quote from the Journal of the Institute of Brewing that I published a few days ago. Written in 1917, it pointed out how the price for barley in Scotland was 20 shillings a quarter higher than the highest price of the previous 100 years.

This is that information in table form, with years of peak prices from the 19th century along with 1916-1917:


The price of barley in Scotland
year price per quarter
1818 54s. 11d.
1824 41s.
1846 41s. 4d.
1850 40s. 6d.
1860 40s. 5d.
1873 42s. 1d.
Sept. 1916 62s.
Dec. 1916 78s.
Feb. 1917 74s. to 76s.
Source:
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 23, Issue 3, May-June 1917, pages 180-181.

The table below covers rather more years, straddling WW I. It shows that UK barley production peaked in 1890 at over 36 million cwts., declining to around 30 million cwts. on the eve of WW I. During the war, production dropped to under 25 million cwts. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this fall in UK production, coupled with a big drop in imports would cause a shortage of barley. You can see that in 1914 barley imports were about 50% lower than in 1910.

If you're wondering why I've two different sets of figures for 1915, it's because they come from different sources. The rows with price columns are taken from the Brewers' Almanack, those without from the Journal of the Institute of Brewing. I've no idea why the numbers are so different from the two sources.

By 1920 domestic barley production was back up to its pre-war level of around 30 million cwts., the rise presumably due to the increase in acreage dedicated to barley. Later in the 1920's output fell to just over 20 million cwts.

The 89 shilling per quarter barley cost in 1920 shows how the price continued to rise through the war.  The price fell back again later in the 1920's to 30-40 shillings per quarter, but that was higher than the immediate pre-war price of under 25 shillings.

Barley imports were a bit up and down in the 1920's, but I know from other figures that they stabilised at around 20 million cwts. in the 1930's.

These fluctuations in price and quantity available must have made life very difficult for maltsters and brewers during WW I and just after.


UK barley acreage, produce, price and imports 1857 - 1927
Year ended Dec. 31. Acreage. Estimated Product Quarters (400 lbs.). Estimated Product cwts. Average Price per Quarter.  Average Price per cwt.  Barley. Imports.
s. d. s. d. Cwts.
1857 -- -- 42 1 11 9 6,076,679
1860 -- -- 36 7 10 3 7,545,932
1870 2,371,739 -- 34 7 9 8 7,217,369
1880 2,695,000 5,408,376 19,315,629 33 1 9 3 11,705,290
1890 2,300,994 10,099,190 36,068,536 28 8 8 0 16,677,988
1900 2,172,129 8,568,286 30,601,021 24 11 7 0 17,189,358
1910 1,899,130 7,880,562 28,144,864 23 3 6 6 18,281,500
1913 1,980,046 8,204,066 29,300,236
1914 1,871,166 8,066,678 28,809,564
1915 1,624,816 5,862,244 20,936,586 37 2 10 5 12,291,685
1915 1,522,646 6,802,244 24,293,729
1916 1,651,874 6,612,660 23,616,643
1920 2,049,306 8,212,000 29,328,571 89 3 25 0 12,667,700
1922 1,691,007 6,664,350 23,801,250 39 11 11 2 12,703,275
1923a 1,485,604 6,154,400 21,980,000 33 8 9 5 18,129,280
1924a 1,465,660 6,400,800 22,860,000 46 9 13 1 21,656,359
1925a 1,470,731 6,456,800 23,060,000 42 0 11 9 15,779,162
1926a 1,269,959 5,740,000 20,500,000 36 11 10 4 11,550,617
1927a 1,166,295 5,353,600 19,120,000 42 0 11 9 16,502,710
Note:
a Great Britain only.
Sources:
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 23, Issue 3, May-June 1917, page 182.
1928 Brewers' Almanack, page 119.


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