Beer Supply Threatened by Global Warming

A new study says a warming globe will be bad news for barley, an essential ingredient in the world’s most popular alcoholic beverage.

A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing.

They are predicting a beer shortage. 

In a report in Nature Plants, researchers in China, Britain and the United States say that by the end of the century, drought and heat could hurt barley crops enough to cause intense pain to beer drinkers. Imagine a worst case of a 20 percent drop in supply in the United States, or a doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. That’s no abstract end of civilization talk; that’s an empty display case at the Stop ’N Go.

It won't disappear entirely, just get a lot more expensive

With particularly bad droughts, for example, the price of a bottle of beer in Ireland might double. In the Czech Republic, it could be six or seven times as expensive. 

China and the United States drink the most beer, because of their populations. “Under the worst scenario,” he said, China would lose 10 percent of its beer supply and the United States 15 to 20 percent.

There are people working on this, but in my view, not the right people.

That won’t happen if Anheuser-Busch has anything to say about it, however. Jess Newman, the company’s director of agronomy in the United States, said, “We take climate uncertainty very seriously.” 

To that end, she and her staff keep an eye on climate predictions, breed new strains of barley, and collect data on their own farms and those of suppliers in Montana, Idaho and North Dakota, to determine best practices. “The barley nerds are on the case,” she said.

But what is going to happen to craft beers?  Who is working to keep their supply of barley going?  I'm not sure I care about Anheuser-Busch products.  I don't want the giant beer producers to dominate the supply.  I want my craft beer.