2013 Good Year For Hops

2013 Good Year For Hops

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Hop growers here in the Pacific Northwest had a good year in 2013. In fact, Washington growers harvested more than 54.9 million pounds of hops last year, up 13% from 2012. Ann George, administrator for Hop Growers of America says the value of the crop also increased.

GEORGE: 10 Our season average price, which is the average of both contracted and spot hops across all three states, and across all varieties, increased this past year from about $3.18 to $3.59 a pound. So it was a pretty substantial increase in the season average price.

According to George, those increases were due in part to unforeseen circumstances.

GEORGE: One of the problems we’ve had the last few years is that our production of Alpha worldwide has exceeded the demand. But the interesting thing is Germany has more acres than we have, but with the draught that they had throughout Europe this past year, and Germany also had some problems with hail, their yields were down substantially this year. So we exceeded their production both in terms of Alpha - even though we’ve had this shift into some of the aroma varieties - we produced 46% of the world’s Alpha this year, compared to Germany with 33%.

When asked what she kind of issues she foresees cropping up this year George had this to say.

GEORGE: Well, I think one of the things that’s probably at the peak of the minds of at least those of us in Washington is certainly going to be irrigation water supplies. But beyond that I think just the continuing shift that our industry is seeing in our variety mix towards the flavored type aroma varieties that the craft industry has an interest in procuring will be the big focus of our growers over the next few years.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.