Bennett's of Ballinacurra Descriptive List (Ref. B609)

B609/

from Sir Richard Levinge to Mrs West concerns difficulties in pricing and selling seed oats, concluding ‘it all points to the fact that the seed oat business is no longer one in which we can reasonably compete’. In a letter of 5 November Mrs West is forewarned that JHB will be asked to send 1000 barrels of commercial Beorna seed to Hutchinson’s of Kirkaldy (Scotland). B609/1/A/38 Letters from AGS, September 1954 to August 1955. A letter of 6 September 1955 concerns a complaint form developed by the National Farmers’ Association regarding disagreements over moisture levels. GP Jackson notes ‘the terms of buying of contract barley are agreed between us and the Grain Committee of the Sugar Beet Growers’ Association and not with the National Farmers’ Association’. A letter of 4 August relates to difficulties being experienced by the National Coal Board in providing adequate supplies of malting coal. In a letter of 24 June from LE Hudson, AGS Experimental Maltings, to Mrs West, the Cereal Station, Ballinacurra, the former thanks the latter for entertaining him and a guest on a recent visit. Letters from March to May contain a number of analyses of kilns conducted by Mr Hudson. A letter of 3 March from Hudson to Mrs West concerns pressure applied by the Waterford County Committee of Agriculture to increase the number of malting barley contracts in that county. A letter of 14 February encloses a copy of AGS policy on conditioning of barley, as increasingly farmers possess their own drying equipment. [A letter of 28 January has a letter head giving names of JHB Directors: Levinge and GP Jackson (AGS) and WH Read, Mrs EF Bennett, and Mrs West of JHB]. A letter of 27 January concerns a pilot scheme for feeding-type roasting barley. In a letter of 17 December 1954, JHB is congratulated on supplying the fist two prize-winners at a recent show (the AGS Barley Competition; see also B609/1/A/59). statute acre in 1901 which again shows we are not perhaps quite so clever today as we thought we were’. In a letter of 28 February, LE Hudson discusses the concerns which the AGS Malt Dept has over pedigree Beorna barley. In a letter of 15 February Mr Hudson asks Mrs West if she could find growers for an experiment with a new variety of barley called Maythorpe. He asks if a grower named Tait might take this on. A letter of 14 January concerns a newly identified abuse, whereby sub-agents are buying barley from farmers at harvest at ‘considerably lower’ than the contract price, then passing it on to the direct buyer as though full price had been paid. A letter of 13 January begins ‘we are under pressure to buy more feeding barley in Co Cork as it alone produces half the barley grown in the country’. In a letter of 5 January, JHB is asked to contract for 40,000 barrels from the 1956 crop. A letter of 16 December 1955 informs JHB of the price per barrel for the 1956 crop, as agreed between AGS and the malting barley negotiation committee of the Irish Beet Growers’ Association. In a letter of 7 November, GP Jackson requests that Mrs West accommodate a visit to Ballinacurra by three English maltsters, for whom he is organising a tour around Ireland. B609/1/A/39 Letters from AGS, September 1955 to August 1956. In a letter of 8 May 1956, GP Jackson thanks Mrs West for a history of the Cereal Station, and adds ‘I was also interested to see that Archer yielded over 15 barrels per