There’s an awful lot for the hops industry to be toasting to this holiday season.
The USDA Economic Research Service released numbers this week showing that hops production in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington jumped 20 percent this year to a record 104 million pounds. While there are other states that produce hops, those three states account for the bulk of the nation’s production. The total number of harvested acres in those three states climbed five percent to 53,282 acres in 2017. The nation’s top hops yield reached 1,959 pounds per acre in 2017, up 246 pounds from last season.
The Hops Growers of America says recent trends show that the crop is on track to double its production acreage in just five years.
To put it in perspective, the number of acres the U.S. has added in the past five years is larger than the total acreage of most of the other hops-growing countries around the world.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.