The annual hop harvest has begun in the pacific northwest, but the 2023 crop is expected to decline as craft beer sales soften. Before the craft beer boom, much of the local farms relied on international and macro brewers but with the rise of microbreweries and the craft beer boom many innovations happened, including exciting new hop varieties, but the downside has been the reliance on the health of this smaller portion of the industry.

“As the beer industry goes, so does the hop industry,” said Ben Edmunds, owner of Breakside Brewery and President of the Oregon Brewers Guild. “We’re the two sides of the same coin.”

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, hop acreage has decreased nationally by 8% from 2022, but the numbers are worse for Oregon hop growers, who are down 11% compared to last year. Oregon is the third largest hop producing state with nearly 7,000 acres, only behind Washington and Idaho.

“This is the first year of me and my husband running the farm and it’s been tough,” said fourth generation hop farmer Erica Lorentz of Sodbuster Farms. “Sometimes it’s simply a variety of hop going out of style, but this year all hops are down because of declining beer sales. At Sodbuster, we’ll harvest 15% less than last year.

Oregon’s 400 breweries generate more than $8.7 billion in economic output, $2.8 billion in wages and help create 50,000 jobs in the state, of those nearly 1,300 are Oregon agriculture jobs. But craft beer sales are down for the first time in decades. According to the U.S. Brewers Association, total beer volume is down at least 3%.