4mo ago

With beer drinking down in US, barley farmers now fear tariffs

www.reuters.com

reuters.com

Summary

U.S. barley farmers face mounting financial pressure as Trump’s tariffs spark fears of losing key export markets.

Canada, the top importer of U.S. malt barley, has already imposed retaliatory tariffs, and Mexico may follow. Farmers warn that rising fertilizer and chemical costs, combined with declining U.S. beer consumption, threaten their survival.

Breweries may absorb or pass higher costs to consumers, potentially raising beer prices.

Experts say tariffs could devastate barley exports, with industry leaders calling them a major blow to struggling American farmers.

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Experts say tariffs could devastate barley exports, with industry leaders calling them a major blow to struggling American farmers.
US barley production at a county level:
And the Trump-Harris results for the 2024 Presidential election at a county level:
I mean, this one is kind of a self-inflicted wound.
EDIT: Well, there's Glacier County, Montana. But even there, it looks like this was an unusually Republican election. That is, it wasn't tariff concerns driving this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_County,_Montana
Glacier County is located in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13,778.[1] The county is located in northwestern Montana between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, known to the Blackfeet as the "Backbone of the World". The county is geographically and culturally diverse and includes the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier National Park, and Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Owing largely to its majority Native American population, Glacier County generally votes strongly Democratic, in contrast with most other rural Montana counties, which trend Republican. Democratic strength lies in the western and central portions of the county in the Blackfeet Reservation, including the city of Browning. However, the eastern portion of the county, including Cut Bank, votes strongly Republican. In most recent elections, Glacier has been the most Democratic county in the state.
In the 2024 election, Glacier county saw a shift toward the Republican party, the strongest such shift of all Montana counties. This mirrored other counties in Montana with high Native American populations, such as Blaine, Roosevelt and Big Horn, which all flipped or leaned more Republican after 2020. While Kamala Harris still easily won the county, this was the first time that Glacier County voted to the right of Missoula County since 1980.[7]
EDIT2: Updated barley map; original one lacked data for some states.
- Goddamnit, ninja’d!
  
  It looks like your barley production map is better. Apparently mine only has data for some states.
  Looks like it still shows the same pattern, though.
- Every time I start to think that maybe there's hope, that the working class might unify against this type of shit, I see another post taking delight in the suffering of others because they happened to vote for the red party that's fucking them, instead of the blue one that's allowing them to be fucked.
  
  I see another post taking delight
  At no point did I say anywhere that this was a delight.
  
  Keep turning the cheek and getting slapped. The rest of us are tired of it.
I wonder what color they use on the election results map for states that grow barley.
This is some leopardsatemyface content.
House: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/US_House_2024.svg/640px-US_House_2024.svg.png
Senate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/2024_United_States_Senate_elections_results_map.svg/640px-2024_United_States_Senate_elections_results_map.svg.png
Presidential: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/ElectoralCollege2024.svg/640px-ElectoralCollege2024.svg.png
USA grains map: https://grains.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/USCGbarleymap-300x175.jpg
Time to push pearled barley in soups and stews, I guess!
Damn, not as many people pouring literal poison down their throats now that weed's legal for most people, huh? Something something world's smallest violin. Fuck you, alcohol industry.
- The culture around beer shifted from cheap low alcohol content drinks with little variation, to more expensive high alcohol content drinks with a ton of variation. Then, as with anything that hits a "trend", the market tries to capitalize on it beyond what demand actually cares to express, and prices go so far through the roof that nobody gives a shit anymore.
  Nobody that was already drinking cares about the health issues (or at least they didn't just suddenly change out of the blue). They just got a taste for something that gradually got priced out. If you got your taste for beers on fancy 10%ABV stouts that now cost $7 a can/bottle, you aren't going to just buy whatever is now in your price range. You just stop buying beer, and get other shit.
  
  Great insight, and really this is emblematic of the idiotic hyper-focus on growth, as much and as quickly as possible. It's always better for society and broader stakeholders if growth happens organically. Growth should happen to satisfy growing demand, it should not be forced to go as fast as possible because there's ridiculous money to be made by getting in early and inflating demand.
  Every damn thing "investors" get a fuckin whiff of they ruin this way, housing being probably the worst (repeat!) offender. We have to figure out how to disincentivize this behavior. It guarantees toxic trash for industries in their wake and just further enriches the worst among us.
  Edit: clarity
  
  It doesn't help that alternatives have been lowering their prices. For example Wine prices have been decreasing due to a large amount of over-production. When a can of fancy beer cost $7 and a decent bottle of wine cost $9-12, economics wins out.
  Oh and south central Washington (Yakima valley) is taking a beating on Hop prices. Most of those expensive beers have a lot of hops in their recipes. Add in they are highly dependent on immigrant labor and they are truly fucked for the next few years.
  
  I feel that. I love fancy crazy beers, but the prices are getting outrageous nowadays. Theres a four pack of cans that looks interesting at my local grocery store, but it's almost 15 dollars for the privilege.
  Do you know what I like even more than fancy beer? Not getting screwed and taken advantage of. At the end of the day, beer isn't even healthy for me anyways--the choice to slow down or stop is no problem at all tbh.
- They said less beer, not less alcohol.
  As someone who has enjoyed cannabis daily for likely longer than you've been alive, there is nothing more annoying than the "all drugs are bad except weed, which is a gift from God" people.
  
  Dude, I don't use cannabis or alcohol. I have no personal stake in this game. I care about this solely from a public health perspective and acknowledge that 1) cannabis is substantially less unhealthy than alcohol and 2) cannabis legalization correlates with a decrease in alcohol sales. I don't care how long you've been alive; being alive longer isn't an argument, so quit being condescending and piss off.
Beer sales are down? What’s used in sparkling water booze – corn? Time to switch to that?
- All of that shit, in the US, is made with malt
  
  Malt what?
  
  A lot of the mass produced beer brands are made with a mix of barley malt and rice. And while other low-alcoholic beverages have traditionally been made with a malt base, many of them (especially alcoholic seltzers) are just fermenting cane sugar syrup these days because it's cheaper and has less flavor to cover up.
They should have included a picture of beer, instead of a couple cans of piss water and diluted piss water
Prohibition 2.0

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