Idaho barley and hops

Idaho is ideal for growing barley. Idaho, with the high desert climate, controlled irrigation water, makes a perfect environment for growing high quality barley that’s highly sought after by the malting industry as well as feed and food barley channels.

Laura Wilder, Executive Director of the Idaho Barley Commission: “With our irrigation water that we have here we’re able to have a more consistent, reliable supply than some of the areas that are mostly dryland. So, we have seen more business come this way and there’s certainly more capacity to grow more barley here to help serve these markets.”

That of course, includes the market for beer.  Idaho farmers typically produce enough malt from barley each year to produce 12 million barrels of beer or 4.1 billion 12-ounce bottles of beer.

“Well, we are the number one barley state, the number two hops state, so we like to say that beer grows here.

About 80% or even a little more is grown for malt barley, and much of that is in eastern Idaho, but also in the Camas prairie and some in northern Idaho. But we also have barley grown for livestock feed and for human food. And with the new barley protein concentrate facility that Scoular has just opened in Jerome, some will be going into that channel as well, and that’s for their product called emerge which will be for aquaculture and pet food.