Late season rain could spell trouble for Idaho barley farmers

ASHTON, Idaho (KIFI) – Late-season rains are spelling concerns for farmers producing one of Idaho’s largest exports.

Spuds may be Idaho’s bread and butter, but barley is the state's fifth-largest export.

For Idaho farmers like Mike Throngren, harvesting barley is no small potatoes.

"I haul my malt barley to Anheuser-Busch in Osgoode, and then it's delivered to the plant where they malt it. A lot of effort goes into it, from planting, fertilizing and, irrigation, harvest marketing, storage of the barley," said Mike Throngren "So that's what's going into the malt houses."

From stalks of seeds, to the malthouse, and eventually to taps all across the country. In 2023, Idaho farms produced 32.7% of the United States barley crop.

Throngren said "Wheat and barley both came off record highs in the last few years. And, we just try to minimize our cost with equipment and do our own repairs. The endgame is to make some money and provide for my family.”

But late August rain…could spell trouble for Idaho farmers.

According to Jared Spackman, assistant professor at the University of Idaho, “A lot of the barley varieties have been bred so that they will germinate really quickly. but with that easy germination, then there's also the risk of it germinating while it's still in the field.”

"it may not get enough moisture to grow like an actual like a stocker stand, but it's enough to start that conversion of those carbohydrates from the seed into sugars, which is what they want to be doing at the malthouse, not here in the field. "

In 2015, late-season rains crippled barley crops for many Idaho and Montana farmers.

Mike Throngren says in 2023 several smaller farmers he knows were hit again leaving some still in recovery.

"There's some guys that still have their 2023 crop that they had to sell for feed barley, which is even I mean, it hurts the pocketbook,” said Throngren

With more late-season rain in the forecast, some farmers are feeling deja vu.

Throngren says “farming is a gamble, and so it's best not to rely on one crop. Spread your spread your cards out. that's what we do. where we try to raise barley, wheat, hay, and cattle. we try to count on something producing"