Research published this week predicting that beer prices could double as rising global temperatures and more volatile weather cause shortages of barley created a big splash. Twitter users and major news outlets widely circulated the dire headlines. But brewers and barley growers say you shouldn’t drown your sorrows just yet: They have a plan.
The paper, published Monday in the journal Nature Plants, warns of “serious supply disruptions” of barley. Analyzing several possible climate change scenarios, the authors find that global yields could drop 17 percent during severe droughts and heat waves in the future and that beer prices could spike calamitously.
However, some in the beer industry think the findings are overblown.
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