Geeks claiming an impending beer shortage

But not beer geeks, arstechnica ArsTech



"There's nothing quite like putting your feet up after a long, hot summer day and enjoying a refreshing cold brew if you're a beer lover. But a warming climate could give rise to global barley shortages, with a resulting shortage of beer. That's the conclusion of a new study just published in Nature Plants."

"To the extreme
The researchers took those extreme climate events and modeled their impact on barley yields in 23 world regions. Then they studied the effect of the resulting barley shortages on the supply and price of beer in each region, under several different scenarios. They concluded that the largest barley growing regions would experience declines in crop yields of 3 to 17 percent, depending on the severity of the conditions. Beer prices would double on average, and consumption would decrease by between 4 percent and 16 percent in the best and worst case scenarios, respectively.

Naturally, there would be regional variations. Price swings are tied to the ability and willingness of consumers to pay more for beer, or, alternatively, to drink less of it, thereby decreasing consumption, per Davis. Beer is already expensive in Australia and Japan, for instance, so beer drinkers there wouldn't feel the brunt of the sticker shock quite so much as other regions, like Belgium, Germany, or the Czech Republic. In Ireland, Davis estimates that people could pay an extra $20 per six pack."

"It's difficult to say whether barley shortages will affect craft brewers or big commercial brewers like Coors more, according to Davis. One could argue that fans of craft beers already are sufficiently affluent to afford more expensive beers, and thus might be more willing to pay even higher prices during a shortage. Coors' customers might be less willing. Then again, Coors has the market dominance to be able to get good barley even in shortage years, with large enough profit margins to ride out the lean times."

Ha, sorry OT'ers.