USA, OR: Willamette Valley hops growers struggle as demand for beer continues to fall

Oregon’s aromatic hop harvest has a bitter note this year.

As beer fans await the return of fresh hop beers to local breweries, growers in the Salem area and Willamette Valley are struggling amid a rapid decline in demand for their crop, the Salem Reporter said on September 6.

The amount of hops grown in Oregon declined 18% this year compared to 2023, with 5,591 acres planted statewide. Farmers are instead leaving fields unplanted or switching to other crops to diversify their

Hops acreage has declined nearly a third from a recent 2018 peak of 8,216 acres, according to data from the Oregon Hops Commission.

The culprit is a shift in drinking habits that has people seeking out less craft beer. Virtually all hops are used to bitter and flavor beer.

The aftereffects of a pandemic supply glut are also still playing out.

For growers like Sodbuster Farms, a fourth-generation farm just north of Keizer, it means leaving nearly 100 acres fallow this year.

Erica Lorentz, the farm’s co-owner and president, said they’re harvesting 730 acres this year while leaving about 90 acres that had previously grown hops idle. Because of the trellis required to string the hops, Lorentz said it’s often too labor intensive to switch to another crop.

“When we don’t grow a certain variety for a year … we are basically stuck with ground that we can’t grow anything else in,” she said.

She said the farm benefits from the experience of her dad and grandpa, who have weathered hop boom and bust cycles before. They’re taking the opportunity to rest some acres that have been struggling while they consider long-term options, she said.

Sodbuster has about a dozen full-time employees year round and employs 60 to 70 during harvest, which is about halfway done. They haven’t had to lay anyone off yet as acreage has declined, but are trying to do more work in-house.

“We’re just really trying to be as lean as possible to make things stretch,” she said.

Oregon is the third largest producer of hops in the U.S. after Washington and Idaho. The state’s crop was worth about $85 million in 2022, according to data from the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

The industry saw rapid growth in the years before the Covid pandemic. Hops are typically grown under contract with brewers, but Covid saw many breweries close or significantly scale back production.

Michelle Palacios, administrator of the Oregon Hops Commission, said craft beer was booming before the pandemic, resulting in a rapid expansion of hops acreage.

“We were starting to be a little oversupplied going into Covid,” she said. “We ended up not adjusting acres soon enough.”

The result is about 184 million pounds of hops in storage around the U.S. — about a year’s supply of the crop, she said.

Since the pandemic, people haven’t been going out as much or attending large events where beer is served, Palacios said. Packaged drink sales are dominating consumption, but beers are now competing with hard seltzers, a growing cider industry and a larger share of people who are cutting back alcohol consumption or going sober.

So far, no Oregon farms have entirely ceased hop production, Palacios said. But many are gradually shifting acreage to nursery stock or field crops to diversify their farms.

“Overall I think all farms are feeling it, all have been impacted at some level,” she said.

The tall trellises and green cones will remain a sight in fields north and east of Salem, but Palacios said she expects to see acreage decline again next year.

“Our hop acreage may never come back to the level that it was,” she said.

06 September, 2024