One of the major lock-ins remaining between farmer and brewer are the malting plants. In the old days a lot of towns had their own malthouse, but nowadays the Belgian market is dominated by just a few large-scale industrial malting plants who produce for the world market at the lowest price. They do not have the flexibility, nor the ambition to malt small batches of locally produced grains. They prefer to process huge amounts of standardised cereals, and are less keen on processing smaller amounts of heritage cereals, which are less predictable in the malt they produce. The network would largely benefit from having a small-scale, ecologically oriented malthouse it could collaborate with. However, developing its own mico-maltery is no easy job and requires some investment.

Another challenge is to raise awareness about price setting. Most processors and consumers are used to world market prices and not always willing to pay more for local and fair products. Therefore more communication is needed so that all different actors within one sector can better understand the reality and production methods of one another.

A third challenge relates to ensuring farmers’ voices are prioritised. Granennetwerk has created a space and process which ensures that farmers’ voices are heard and prioritised in decision making and in planning. However, ensuring the strong voice and meaningful participation of farmers in platforms and processes when other actors are involved is a challenge. Further formalising the structure of the network to a cooperative or a similar structure is being explored to strengthen collaboration and joint decision-making.

In addition to a formalised business structure, there is a need for support structures. This includes the need to expand the development of small-scale malteries that are willing to malt small batches of non-standard cereals. Studies on the work of the Granennetwerk and the production of the old varieties of cereals would also support and validate the work of the farmers, backing up with research and scientific data the impact and the benefits of the work they are doing for the preservation of healthy soils and climate. The network is really pioneering and to a large degree experimenting with reintroducing old varieties of cereals but has little time to take extensive notes and study the outcomes of its work. Its innovative approach to internal governance and ways of organising would also benefit from being better documented. .

A final concern relates to the transition to organic farming methods and to organic certification. Two issues are worth highlighting here. First, it is difficult to encourage conventional farmers to make the transition towards ecologically sound farming methods. This is despite the fact that cereals are an excellent crop to start the journey with, to experiment and to use in rotation plans. Making the transition is hard and should get more support.

Second, it is difficult to involve and collaborate with farmers who produce cereals in an agroecological way, but who don’t (yet) have organic certification.  Since the brewery applied for the BIO-label, it has had to let go of some of the organic farmers who didn’t have the label, but were happy to produce cereals in an organic way and sell them to the network. The BIO-label that is used for organic Belgian products is very time consuming to obtain. Organic producers who don’t have certification will find it hard to sell their crop, or will need to  have the consumers’ trust (e.g. through their on the farm shop) or a good working relationship with a processor, like the brewery.