Fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt by malt barley growers in this area.

With barley planting time at hand, growers learned by letter from Briess Malt & Ingredients Co. in recent days that the company seeks to set aside grower contracts for the 2020 growing season.

In his letter, Ryan O’Toole, Briess president and COO, said shutdowns in communities across the country, ordered by government to contain the spread of the virus, have negatively impacted the company and its customers. Briess maintains that the COVID-19 pandemic is “an event outside of our control.”

Briess is targeting up to 50% reductions in malt barley needs.

“At this time, some of you have seeded acres, and some of you have not seeded your barley acres,” O’Toole wrote. “We understand that you have other options currently available to you such as growing sugar beets, dry edible beans, wheat, corn, etc., instead of our barley. We want to be upfront and notify you now that we will guarantee taking 50% of your contracted quantity. We will re-evaluate our needs on a monthly basis, and if our needs are greater than that, the remaining bushels will be accepted on a percentage basis.”

Growers were offered options of: 1) terminating the contract; 2) agreeing to reduced acres in an amended contract; or 3) leaving the current contract in place with the baseline guarantee that 50% of contracted quantity would be taken.

Contacted at Briess headquarters in Chilton, Wisconsin, O’Toole said the social-distancing and stay-at-home orders in many states impacted breweries, tap rooms and dining places where beer is served on the premises. Businesses who are Briess customers have been decimated by the shutdowns, he said.

With consumption down, the reality is the craft brewing industry has surplus inventories. Malt from beer barley is caught in the overstocked supply chain.

O’Toole said he knows he is a messenger bearing difficult news.

“I would want the community to know these things are tough,” he said. “We are a family company, a fifth-generation family company. We want to communicate and be upfront and transparent with our growers as we go forward to overcome this.”

He hopes for a quick rebound after the pandemic passes.

“The consumers will go back to the tap rooms, the microbreweries and the dining rooms. Breweries will get back to doing what they do best, and we will resume selling malt to them for their beer,” he said.

The Briess president stressed that the 250 family farm growers of the region are vital to the future of Briess malt barley fortunes.

“We have made the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and the southern Montana area part of our business model,” O’Toole said. “It’s important to us. We are family-owned ourselves. We prefer to deal with family farms.”

As of March 1 — prior to the COVID-19 pandemic impacting daily life — Wyoming growers were expected to plant 115,000 acres of barley this year, according to surveys collected by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. That represented a 34,000-acre — or nearly 42% — increase from actual barley plantings in 2019. As of Sunday, growers across the state reported to the USDA that they had planted about 37% of their barley.