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!
Our business is solely dependent on the success of agriculture. 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 malting barley from our ABC Grower Group, formed of 200 local farmers in a 20-year, long-standing partnership. The ABC Grower Group is a tripartite agreement between two local merchants Adams & Howling and Banhams, alongside Crisp Malt (hence, ABC). All growers are within 40 miles of two of our malting sites – Great Ryburgh and Ditchingham, supporting local farm businesses through long-term security. This partnership facilitates the ability for us to collect data and information on farm practices alongside our growers, and work with them to establish transition plans which will support resilience in the malting barley crop, year on year.
We began working with Map of Ag in 2022 to collect data from our growers to understand on-farm GHG emissions and nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) on their spring and winter barley. 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 individually benchmarked 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 that we can understand trends in the data and influencing factors which are specific to each farm, to strategically plan how we will reduce our Scope 3 GHG emissions.
Weighted Average Emissions intensity (kg CO2e / tonne)
This data results from 40 members of the ABC Group, representing 50,000 tonnes of barley. The increase in the emissions intensity from 2022 to 2023 in both spring and winter barley is likely a result of below-average yields in 2023. This was due to wet weather in Norfolk resulting in a higher grain moisture and slightly elevated nitrogen levels.
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:
There are clear trends in our data, highlighting the importance of focusing on NUE to achieve optimum yields with the lowest possible carbon footprint.
The following is a sample of data from our ABC Grower Group, from the spring barley crop in 2023.
The greater the application rate of nitrogen, the lower the NUE of the crop:
A higher rate of NUE results in a greater yield of the crop, and a lower emissions intensity per tonne of barley overall:
Understanding the impact of NUE on the crop, in the specific context of individual farms, can be used to inform our sustainable farming strategy. Farmers can use this knowledge to influence their on-farm decisions, to optimise their yields and lower their carbon footprint.
Working with the same farms year on year, enables Crisp Malt to support farmers to build a resilient and sustainable supply. Focusing on NUE as a key metric will drive down on-farm GHG emissions, resulting in lower carbon malt for our customers. The scale of data collection that we can reproduce every year and the close collaboration of the ABC partnership will guarantee the success of our sustainable farming transition.
Back to top
