As Craft Beers Gain Popularity, Hopyards Appear in Midwest

An alternative crop is emerging amid the corn and soybean fields of Iowa: hops.

The Iowa City Press-Citizen talked with a farmer in May who is converting a fourth of his 100-acre traditional farm into a hopyard.

The hopyard—Buck Creek in Johnson County, Iowa—is the largest in the state. It belongs to Mark Pattison and his four partners, who this spring planted 25,000 new hops plants and assembled a network of 1,600 trellises for the vines to climb.

Pattison and his partners told the newspaper they expect to harvest 80,000 pounds of hops a year once the plants reach maturity. With national consumer interest in craft beer building, hence the demand for hops, prices have increased from $3 a pound 10 years ago to $7 to $10 a pound last season, the Press-Citizen reported.

Diana Cochran, an assistant professor in Iowa State University’s Department of Horticulture, told the newspaper that hops growers have begun locating beyond the Pacific Northwest in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and Vermont. She said she believes hops can be a viable crop in Iowa as long as farmers are attentive to brewers’ quality requirements and are able to find the right varieties for the Midwest climate. S