Friday 12 July 2013

Hop production by country 1900 - 1921

We're back with hops today. With another sexy little table to seduce us, fluttering its eyelids and waggling its arse. Aren't we lucky?

Why am I bothering you with this particular table? Because it straddles WW I and shows the effect of the war on the hop trade. Or lack of effect, in some cases.

The four countries with the biggest share of hop production  - Germany, USA, UK and Czechoslovakia - remained at the top of the pile for most of the 20th century. With the exception of Britain, whose hop industry collapsed in the 1980's.

It's a great irony that the country to profit most from the effects of the war, the USA, wasn't brewing any beer at all by the time of the last figures. Presumably it was exports that kept hop growing alive in the US. I can't think of many uses for hops other than in making beer.


Share of world hop production by country
Country 1900/01 1905/06 1910/11 1914/15 1919/20 1920/21
Germany 27.97% 24.56% 25.14% 24.50% 11.94% 13.56%
UK 22.80% 28.60% 18.88% 26.51% 25.47% 25.92%
USA 21.25% 20.39% 25.52% 26.20% 35.27% 32.08%
Czechoslovakia formerly Bohemia 10.01% 11.85% 14.43% 14.41% 11.67% 11.63%
Russia 5.17% 4.05% 3.70% war zone - -
France 4.65% 2.87% 3.45% 2.83% 7.98% 8.69%
Belgium 3.36% 4.33% 3.70% war zone 1.99% 3.38%
Australia 1.04% 0.60% 0.65% 0.82% 2.90% 2.28%
Other countries 3.75% 2.75% 4.53% 4.73% 2.78% 2.46%
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

In Britain and Belgium (more surprisingly) Belgium the war appears from this table to have had little effect. But if you look at the acreage under hops and the quantity of hops produced, you can see that this wasn't the case.


Hop production and acreage
1913 1921 1912 1922
Country ha ha zentners zentners
Germany 27,048 11,279 460,000 173,000
UK 14,449 10,179 375,000 325,000
USA 21,790 11,300 499,000 275,000
Czechoslovakia 15,878 8,640 334,000 109,000
France 2,861 4,214 60,000 86,000
Alsace-Lorraine 4,185 2,665 95,000 61,000
Belgium 2,283 1,500 70,000 27,000
World 101,078 52,955 1,975,000 1,074,000
Sources:
Barth Hop Report 1913-1914 
Barth Hop Report 1922-1923 

(I've used different years for the production because 1913 and 1921 were both years with a particularly bad harvest.)

In absolute terms, production fell everywhere except France.  And the only reason it increased there was because of the transfer of Alsace-Lorraine back to France. Globally hop production was approximately cut in half as a result of WW I.

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