Barley Crop Damaged
Hailstorm wipes out parts of barely crop in Colorado
A severe hailstorm in south central Colorado earlier this month wiped out part of the barley crop that MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch use to brew beer.
A MillerCoors spokesman said the Aug. 16 storm that battered the San Luis Valley would not affect its beer production or prices. An Anheuser-Busch spokesman declined to comment beyond a written statement.
The storm, the worst in recent memory, caused an estimated $42.4 million in crop damage in the worst-hit areas of Saguache County, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. About 10% of the crop in that area was lost, which represents about 3% of the total overall barely used by MillerCoors. MillerCoors also buys malting barley from hundreds of growers in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
The hailstorm hit an estimated 28,640 acres of crops in the worst affected areas of Saguache County, according to the Farm Service Agency.
I thought the “big boys” pulled out of San Luis Valley last year. AlexisScarlett can you shed some light on this new report.
PS. See you at harvest in Sept.
San Luis Valley is just over 1.5 hr north of me and I can tell you the storms have been viscious here in the afternoons also. I have luckily missed the hailstorms so far, and most of the NM hop crop is in. I have another week to try to miss the hail.
Sorry to hear about the losses for the barley farmers. If it wasn’t frost this year, it’s hail at the end of the game. Dang.
Are the famous San Luis Valley potatoes hurt too?
Stop the hail!!
Yeah, right.
Good hop crops, bad barley crops, do beer prices go up again?
Capitol Press reports that Idaho’s malt barley crop is doing “pretty well”.
Unfortunate for the barley growers that got hit in Colorado.
Yeah– see you soon.
The big guys are not leaving entirely ever. What is happening is they are offering contracts this year for next season that don’t make farmers happy at all. They have contracts all over so that any disaster does not hurt them. see the little percentages.
It is just that Coors used to be so linking with Colorado….Rocky Mountain spring water and Colorado barley. But they paid alot of money to farmers and built so much in rural colorado with the promise they would always be here perhaps to buy barley
Barely farmers
Andrea