ODA Helps Oregon Hop Farmers

With your Fruit Grower Report, I'm Susan Allen. Hop harvest begins in late August, and last through early October with Oregon and Washington varieties maturing at a different time, Hop vines are mechanically cut at the ground and at the overhead support wires, and fall into a trailer or truck bed. The vines are hung upside down on hooks and carried into the picking machine, where hops and leaves are stripped from the vine and sent through a series of cleaning devices and that's inspectors with the Oregon Department of Agriculture come in . While you enjoy that cold brew, it's more than likely that an ODA inspector painstakingly picked out leaves and stems that might be an ingredient. ODA's Randy Black says the lower the percentage of these undesirable elements, the better the price to the grower who has a contract with the brewer:

BLACK: "They could start docking and take money away right off the top [from] the growers if there is more leaf or stem or seed than the contract calls for. And if there is so much or too much, it could be rejected."

Over a two-month period, ODA inspectors provide a very important third-party service for Oregon's $34 million hop industry and its 30-some family farm growers:

BLACK: "They support us because they know that we are unbiased and we are honest. We are very, very careful. I have triple redundancies on recording everything, all the numbers and how we inspect. So we are very precise and accurate." :

Oregon ranks second in the nation in hop production, only behind Washington. While the number of growers has remained fairly steady, acreage has gone up 57 percent the past five years. This year's crop appears to be average or better. More and more, Oregon growers are marketing at least a percentage of their crop directly to craft brewers– a sector of the industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years. In Salem, I'm Bruce Pokarney.