Climate Change Will Cause Beer Shortages and Price Hikes, Study Says (vice.com)

A new study from Nature Plants has identified the one climate-related issue that can unite people from myriad political backgrounds -- beer. From a report: Led by Wei Xie, an agricultural scientist at Peking University, the paper finds that regions that grow barley, the primary crop used to brew beer, are projected to experience severe droughts and heat waves due to anthropogenic climate change. According to five climate models that used different projected temperature increases for the coming century, extreme weather events could reduce barley yields by 3 to 17 percent. Barley harvests are mostly sold as livestock fodder, so beer availability could be further hindered by the likely prioritization of grain yields to feed cattle and other farm animals, rather than for brewing beer.

The net result will be a decline in affordable access to beer, which is the most commonly imbibed alcoholic beverage in the world. Within a few decades, this luxury may be out of reach for hundreds of millions of people, including those in affluent nations where breweries are a major industry. Price spikes are estimated to range from $4 to over $20 for a standard six-pack in nations like the US, Ireland, Denmark, and Poland.

Comments

A few things...

[Strider-]

The types of Barley you use for beer making is completely different than animal feed. Animal feed is 6-row barley (ie on the grain head, there are six rows of seeds) while the barley used for beer is 2 row. (ie two rows of seed). This is mostly because 6 row has far more flavour involved chemicals in it, whereas 2 row is a much cleaner slate, suitable for things other than dark ales.

Re:So What?

[HornWumpus]

I like Tsingtao, so I tried another brand of Chinese beer. 'Sing Ha' (not the Thai malt liquor, the Chinese beer. Both apparently anglicise to almost the same name.)

Tried one, didn't finish it. Just awful.

Mentioned how bad it was to a couple of Chinese coworkers...their reaction...That's made with Shanghai city water, it will give you cancer, don't drink it. They're selling that in the USA? How is that possible?

This was a long time ago, 'poisonous chinese beer' ship has sailed.

Re: Main concern

[habig]

Yeah, no shit... not to mention, alcohol has driven a lot more people apart than it has brought together.

Actually, there's an archaeological case to be made that the switch from humans as hunter-gatherers to humans as farmers was because of beer. At least, this is one interpretation of the fact that evidence of brewing is a common feature of many of the earliest farming communities. And thus, bringing everyone together in this "civilization" thing.

Of course, even if the motivation was Sumerian bros looking for keggers, the useful side effects (steady source of food, source of water that won't kill you because up till recently the only way to get antiseptic water was brew up the alchohol content or boil something (tea, coffeee)) certainly made the farming thing stick.

Re:Go vegan!

[religionofpeas]

It's not a choice. Have less kids or no kids AND become vegan

Have less kids, become a vegan, don't have pets, don't drive, don't heat your house, and commit genocide. There's a lot more you can do.

Re: Main concern

[Hognoxious]

The first part of the beermaking process is boiling the grain to extract the sugars. As a convenient side-effect it kills most nasty germs.

Skunking is caused by exposure to light altering the alpha-acids, it's nothing to do with whether it's safe or not. If it's really off it will smell of vinegar, cheese and puke in various charming combinations.

Re: Main concern

[lgw]

There's plenty of dangerous bacteria that can survive the alcohol concentration of beer. The key is that you'll know, because they'll run wild consuming the beer. Even if you water down the beer to below 1% ("small beer"), as was typical for most drinking, as long as you give it a while you'll know the new mix is safe.

Past performance in biology is not indicator

[aepervius]

That should be a mantra for you "Past performance in biology is not indicator of future performance". To convince yourself take yield before the haber revolution to a few year after and project to what yield we have by now. To make a more clear example, the potatoe yield since 1990 has stayed the same in UK : 40 tons per hectare, after an incredible increase it stayed stable (15 ton per hectare in 1885 , then nearly 80 years later it stayed at 20 tons per hectare, then jumping doubling until 1990). The fact is that such agricultural increase happens by steps, and there is no guarantee of a future steps up. If you want another example, our life expectancy exploded due to easy steps to do, but barely moved up in the last 20 years (in the western world). So to answer this :

Also, it's pretty much guaranteed that crop yield will improve more than 17% through clever engineering between now and 2100

no, it isn't guaranteed, and in some case there could be a reversion as some crop/vegetable need a certain medium low stable temperature which could actually with a more chaotic continental climate, not be a given, and thus in some case we could have for certain country a lower yield.