The rail backlog has forced Canadian grain handlers to suspend any open market malted barley purchases. Currently the rain system is 1,700 cars behind on orders with oldest single-car orders dating back to November 5, 2013. Many elevators have opted for truck transport but this method isn’t able to transport the needed volume of grain to move out the 2013 crop and is causing truck transport to be increasingly difficult to obtain. Some malting operations have had to scale back on production because of a lack of barley supplies. Feed barley movements are also limited because of a lack of U.S. exports. Global barley trade for the current marketing year is expected to increase 0.5 million tons to 20.7 million tons with Australia forecasted to ship 5.5 million tons, making it the world’s largest barley exporter outranking the EU. Chinese imports are projected to increase 0.3 million tons to 2.8 million tons. Imports to Turkey are expected to increase 0.1 million tons to 0.2 million tons, and Algeria’s barley imports are expected to increase 0.1 million tons to equal 0.5 million tons.
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