Study finds climate change could double beer price

The cost of a pint of beer could rise sharply in the United States and other countries because of the increased risk of heat and drought, according to a new study examining the possible effects of climate change on barley crops .

Peter Nicholls / Reuters

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Peter Nicholls / Reuters

The cost of a pint of beer could rise sharply in the United States and other countries because of the increased risk of heat and drought, according to a new study examining the possible effects of climate change on barley crops .

Peter Nicholls / Reuters

The price of beer could rise sharply this century – and it has nothing to do with the trends in the brewpub. Instead, a new study indicates that beer prices could double, on average, because of the price of malted barley, a key ingredient of the world's favorite liquor.

By projecting heat and drought trends over the next few decades, a team of researchers in China, the United Kingdom and the United States has revealed that the changing climate could have adverse effects on the production of water. ;barley. And that means that some parts of the world would probably have to pay a lot more for a beer.

In Ireland, one of the major beer consuming countries, prices could triple, according to the study. Other countries would probably drink less beer because their farmers would have to export more barley to countries that would have trouble growing enough barley in warmer and drier conditions.

Researchers recognize that the price of beer is "not the most worrying impact of future climate change". But in the study published Monday in the journal Nature Plants, scientists say they want to use beer as an example to show the profound and varied effects of increasingly extreme weather conditions.

Describing the worst of predictions, Steven J. Davis, one of the researchers who conducted the study, wrote on Twitter:

"In higher-warming climate scenarios, we see 100-year drought and heat events every three years, with barley yields falling by an average of 17 percent in those years, and six in the United States increases from $ 1 to $ 8. Another way, climate change will be zero. "

The effects described in the report are complex, with researchers using several forecasting tools, one predicting a series of climate scenarios, one focusing on agricultural yields and the other allowing for know the economic conditions that may result. And as we have seen with the changing climate of the Earth, the expected effects vary considerably from one region to another.

According to four different weather scenarios created for the years 2010 to 2099, barley producers of the world would see "yield losses [that] According to the study, they range from 3% to 17%.

Under this global impact, regional differences would be striking.

South America would have poor results, like many tropical regions. In China and the United States, barley output is actually expected to increase – but "not enough to offset the overall decline," the study says.

According to the researchers, climate change could reshape the barley and beer market, illustrating a situation in which China – which currently drinks more Budweiser than the US – would reduce its beer consumption.

Whether in the best or the worst case, it is in Ireland, Canada, Poland and Italy that beer drinkers will likely see prices rise the most, according to the report. Countries that like beer, Belgium and the United Kingdom are also in the top 10.

Even with the two average climate models used in the study, beer consumption is expected to drop to about 2 billion liters on average, in China alone. The United States would not be far behind, with beer consumption dropping to an average of about 1.75 billion liters.

The researchers acknowledge that their study has certain limitations. On the one hand, it is difficult to predict the behavior of beer drinkers and their changing tastes. It is also possible that barley producers find ways to adapt.

"Our results reflect the impacts of extreme events as they occurred today," the study says, adding, "The world population and socio-economic conditions are also kept constant."

The brewing association, the American professional group, responded to the study by calling it "an essentially academic exercise and not an activity for which brewers or beer lovers should lose all sleep".

Bart Watson, BA economist, and Chris Swersey, supply chain expert, said the beer industry "understands and is already preparing for climate change" and writes that the production of Barley has always evolved geographically, while the efficiency of production continues to grow over time.

According to Watson and Swersey, another element to consider is the ongoing research to help not only barley, but also hops – another essential ingredient of beer – to withstand high temperatures and drought.

The study's authors consider their work as a first step in analyzing long-term impacts on beer drinkers, saying that they wanted to "isolate the effects of extreme weather events." keeping all other conditions constant ".

Of course, there are some of us who might be able to reduce their beer consumption. After all, a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet said: "Our results show that the safest level of alcohol consumption is zero." But Dabo Guan, one of the lead authors of the study and professor of climate change economics, pointed out that beer has been part of human history for thousands of years. years.

"It could be argued that consuming less beer is not inherently disastrous and may even have beneficial health effects," said Guan in a statement from the University of East Anglia, where he works . "Nevertheless, there is no doubt that for millions of people around the world, the climate will affect the availability of beer and the price of beer will be an insult to injury."

The research paper attracted a lot of attention because it provides people with a very concrete point of reference from which to see the concept of climate change. Davis admitted that he did not know how to interpret this phenomenon, after the report "attracted much more attention than any of my previous work on energy transitions or even deaths due to air pollution" .

But Davis also acknowledged that for him, as for many, the beer index is personal. This research, he said, is "born of love and fear."