Since 1870 we’ve lived and breathed malting. With this passion and expertise, and by combining traditional and modern techniques, we create an impressive range of malted and non-malted products, including several unique and exclusive barley malts.
There is nothing more we love than talking to brewers and distillers so if you have any questions, or would like to arrange a call with a member of our team, please feel free to get in touch – we would love to hear from you!
Working with our growers is crucial to support a resilient supply, as they begin to face more frequent impacts of climate change on the growing seasons. We source our Scottish malting barley from a Grower Group in the north of Scotland, formed of 68 local farmers in a long-standing partnership, within 15 miles of a local distillery. This group facilitates the ability for us to collect data and information on farm practices alongside our growers, and work with them to establish transition plans that will support resilience in the malting barley crop, year on year.
Map of Ag is a platform that connects and integrates data on scale to offer insights and tools to improve long-term sustainability. The GHG What If tool is an interactive scenario-planning platform which gives farmers insights into how changing their inputs, such as fertiliser and crop protection, impacts their results on GHG emissions and NUE. We also use this tool to collect their actual scenarios each year, and can use this data to understand the drivers of variability in their results across the group. Map of Ag validate and analyse the data, reporting on our results within a dashboard. Growers are also benchmarked individually against the rest of the group, anonymously.
The long-term supply agreements with our growers allow us to compare the same farms year on year, against the baseline set in 2022. Entering our fourth round of data collection means we can understand trends in the data and influencing factors specific to each farm, and strategically plan how we will reduce our Scope 3 GHG emissions.
This data results from 41 members of the Scottish Grower Group, representing 26,000 tonnes of barley, across 4,000 Ha. The GHG emissions intensity of spring barley is relatively consistent, with a reduction of 10kg CO2e / tonne between 2023 and 2024. The average yield increased from 6.11 tonnes per Ha in 2023 to 6.34 tonnes per Ha in 2024.
NUE is the measure of total N input to the crop compared to total N output. It is calculated from available N (within the soil and applied), harvested yield, and harvested grain total nitrogen. The target range for optimum efficiency is 70-90%.
NUE is influenced by factors such as:
The following is a sample of data from our Scottish Grower Group, from the spring barley crop in 2024.
There are clear trends in our data, highlighting the importance of focusing on NUE to achieve optimum yields with the lowest possible carbon footprint.
Maximizing NUE% depends on how nitrogen fertiliser is managed – specifically the rate, amount, and timing of application. Our data shows that higher yields are associated with higher NUE percentages. However, this does not mean that applying more nitrogen will increase either NUE or yield.
When GHG emissions intensity with NUE, the relationship is clear: higher NUE percentages consistently correspond with a lower farm-level carbon footprint.
Farms with fertiliser NUE values above 100% are effectively accounting for their Soil Nitrogen Supply (SNS) by reducing their nitrogen fertiliser application rates. This means that the crop is meeting its nitrogen requirements through a combination of applied fertiliser and naturally available soil nitrogen. As a result, the total nitrogen taken up by the crop exceeds the amount applied as fertiliser, with the remainder being drawn from the soil’s natural nitrogen reserves.
Working with the same farms year on year enables Crisp Malt to understand the impact of NUE on the crop in the specific context of individual farms, providing repeatability of data. Our farmers can use this insight from their data to inform their on-farm decisions, optimising yields and reducing their carbon footprint.
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