There’s no beer without the farmers who grow its ingredients, and there’s no sugar-coating the impact of beer’s current pullback on what they need from those farms. Add to that a pronounced shift toward lower ABV, more efficient hopped beers, and climate challenges that have reduced acres harvested, and that impact begins to look more dramatic.
Here, we map the year-over-year changes in barley and hop production based on data from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, as reported by the American Malting Barley Association and USA Hops.
Source: nass.usda.gov