USA, MT: Malting barley 2013 harvested for MillerCoors in Montana

They say wheat is king in Montana, but according to MillerCoors officials, malting barley is just as important to the state’s agricultural economy, and certainly to the MillerCoors plant in Huntley, reports Prairie Star.

“Montana growers produce about a quarter of the barley our company uses,” said Wade Malchow, manager of Strategic Sourcing of Brewing Materials for MillerCoors. “We couldn’t achieve what we need to in the brew house or in the marketplace without the hard work the growers put into producing pristine, high quality barley.”

While official harvest tallies aren’t in yet, Montana is expected to be one of the top barley-growing states in the nation – if not the top – in 2013.

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, Montana producers harvested 44.82 million bushels of barley this year, a 7 percent increase from the 41.87 million bushels harvested last year and much more than the 31 million bushels produced in 2011.

The average yield this year was 54 bushels per acre, up 1 bushel from last year, and much of that is malting barley contracted to MillerCoors in Huntley.

Because of their success in Huntley and the fact a lot of Montana’s malting barley is harvested in the Golden Triangle, a second MillerCoors Montana site is under construction in Power, MT.

“The new facility in Power will allow MillerCoors to contract more barley in that area than previously, manage our logistics costs, and have the ability to condition the barley to maintain the highest level of quality,” said Malchow.

The 3.2 million bushel barley elevator for MillerCoors is located on 10 acres on the western edge of the Teton County community in Power and is set to open this fall, he added.

MillerCoors had several locations it was considering before Power was chosen but Malchow said, in the end, it was all about location.

“Power offered the correct combination of several important factors,” he said.

Those factors include the fact the site is located near growers who raise “excellent malting barley,” Malchow said.

In addition, the site “offered great railroad access near the BNSF mainline, and it also has convenient access to Interstate 15.”

This particular property, Malchow said, “offered MillerCoors the potential to build the type of elevator we envisioned, and the community of Power and the greater Golden Triangle region have been very welcoming.”

The Power plant is the first plant MillerCoors has constructed since the 1970s.

Down in the south central part of the state, malting barley contracted with MillerCoors in Huntley has been an important rotational crop for decades.

“Although we had some yield loss due to hail, we had a pretty decent harvest this year,” Dave Dougherty, regional manager for MillerCoors in Huntley said, adding their contracted malting barley acres are two-row MillerCoors proprietary varieties grown under irrigation, with a few dryland acres.

“We have a world-class malting barley development program at MillerCoors and have test plots in each of the growing areas we draw from,” Dougherty said, adding MillerCoors is in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Colorado.

Barley is trucked to the 3.7 million bushel elevator in Huntley when the growers’ contracts specify. Acres contracted are located south of Huntley to the Wyoming border, to the west of Billings, across eastern Montana to Yellowtail Dam, Custer, and over to Miles City.

“It is an important growing region for us,” Dougherty said.

“We have about 175 contracted growers, and we value each one of them,” he said, adding they have been contracting with some families for the past 40 years since the plant was built.

Each year after harvest, they choose their Top Grower of the Year and Environmental Stewardship award, but they have not been selected for 2013 yet.

Dougherty said they collaborate with the grower to manage and grow the best malt barley crop possible.

Dougherty also said while it is not an exact measurement, they like to say, “a bushel of barley equals a barrel of beer.”

And Malchow added, “Our growers are part of the backbone of our business – to have great beer requires great malting barley growers.”

18 October, 2013