in the chain and providing direct communication, substantial progress has been made
towards all these objectives, while enabling an assessment of the contribution of the
farmers have contributed to the improvement and detailing in which way the barley
was grown and treated.
Mouterij Albert, our Belgian malting, has been working with various agricultural coop
eratives in France in pursuit of similar objectives for several years. A start has been
made in Slovakia and Spain on applying on a large scale what we have learned.
The supply-chain will be used as the basis for further projects on the sustainable farm
ing of malting barley (see Chapter 5). As well as aspects such as yield, quality and
integrity, the research will focus more directly on the effects of barley production on
the environment and, where possible, the elimination of any adverse effects.
With regard to hops, the other main raw material in beer production, long-term
agreements have been reached with a number of hop growers and suppliers.
These agreements are on similar lines to the supply-chain projects referred to above.
The advantage in this case is that the number of hop growers is very small.
Some of our breweries process local raw materials such as sorghum and rice.
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