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Farmers View 1st September 2009

There was a time, not too many years ago, when every travelling sales rep or daytime visitor to a farm would be welcomed by the offer of a dram, either to smooth the path of business or to seal the deal on its completion.   These days are now behind us but the place of the whisky bottle in the farming tradition is one that is still remembered by many and should perhaps be written into the history of an era now gone.  The whisky industry however still commands a significant degree of respect and an important place in the farming economy.

Internationally Scotch Whisky has a reputation as a high quality product which sells in premium markets from the United States to Japan, from Europe to India and thousands of other places where quality is respected and often where some of Scotland’s other traditions, golf for example, are also held in high esteem.  It’s no surprise that Scotland’s tourist industry, in this year of homecoming, is increasingly built around our many distilleries.  Some of them employ more tourist guides than production workers with the distilling process going on, apparently unmonitored, while the tourists are shown round the vats and stills before being shown into the shop to buy the product.

Over the years this Scottish product has been flattered by imitation, particularly by the Japanese.  Their love of Scotch whisky has led them to attempt to duplicate the product, often importing raw materials including water from right here in Scotland.  One of the most entertaining, and cynical things I have ever seen is the television advert, made for the Japanese market, where Sean Connery  extols the virtues of Suntory, the Japanese made whisky, which sells well in that market and has become well known, even in this country, for its sponsorship  of, what else but golf tournaments!

Back home, whisky is big business and getting bigger every year.  Its contribution to the Scottish economy is vital and it provides jobs in some of our most marginal rural areas.  While it still tries to sell itself on its tradition, the distilleries are now largely owned by huge international companies and our famous whisky brands now change hands in multi million £ take -over deals.   Of course the ownership of these companies is an irrelevance as long as the product is made here from good Scottish raw materials, by Scottish workers in Scottish communities.

For the farming industry, the growing of malting barley has been raised by some, to the level of an art form with many a farmer specialising in growing the product while some of our best agricultural research institutions have worked long and hard over the years to produce the barley varieties, sometimes so specialised that they are only grown in specific localities.  The skill of the farmer who can grow a crop that meets the requirement on looks and analysis, is worthy of the reward that it can sometimes bring.  However, the process of marketing that product can sometimes be fraught with danger.

As our distilleries, one by one, gave up the process of malting their own barley, leaving the job to specialists who could carry out the process on an industrial scale, the market for malting barley became more regulated and it became harder to return the margins which once could be achieved.  The so called, ‘malting barley contract’,  has become an injustice of mythological proportion with farmers signing their crop away only to discover that the buyer has the automatic right to walk away if he can find fault with the product.  That fault can often be convenient for the buyer, indiscernible to the seller and simply demonstrates that the contract was one-sided and un-enforceable in the first place.  But if they are going to make whisky, they have to buy our barley don’t they?

Many of these companies have been caught importing foreign barley before; undermining their partners in the farming industry.  They have argued in the past that the quality of supply and the unpredictability of the crop mean that they will always have to keep the option of imports open.  I have heard that argument put many a time.

Last month, before the local harvest was up to speed and with a record crop of malting barley expected, a ship carrying 3000 tonnes of barley, already malted, arrived at Dundee.  The importer, Diageo, had not only stabbed the Scottish farmer in the back, they had done it to the maltsters too.  They are selling a tradition but they are willing to cheat their customers and their suppliers to make a fast buck at the drop of a hat.

If it’s not made from Scottish barley, then it’s not Scotch whisky. End of story.