Environmental Impact Assessment of Hops
Yakima Chief Hops & Yakima Chief Ranches
Primary Contacts: Levi Wyatt and Joe Catron and Drew Carlson Rothe
Best way to reach the contacts:
levi.wyatt@yakimachief.com and joe@yakimachiefranches.com and andrew@yakimachiefranches.com
Company Background:
Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) is a 100% farmer-owned global hop supplier with a mission to connect the multi-generational family hop farms of the Pacific Northwest with the world’s finest brewers. YCH strives to make continuous improvements across the entire supply chain, from collaborating with farmers and breeders to improve hop quality and develop new varieties, to pioneering new hop processing technologies and research.
Yakima Chief Ranches (YCR) was founded in the late 1980’s when three hop-farming families came together to form a hop production, research, and breeding farm in the Yakima Valley. Initial breeding results from the program were fruitful, leading to the selection and release of several new hop cultivars. YCR is proud to work with over 30 farms in the Pacific Northwest to ensure a quality hop supply for the global market. YCR’s mission is to create, grow, and protect value for all within the YCR footprint.
Project Summary: At Yakima Chief Hops and Yakima Chief Ranches, we pride ourselves as champions of innovation, dedicated to delivering unparalleled value to both growers and brewers.
This initiative focuses on creating validated environmental footprint data for various hop varieties under the Hop Breeding Company portfolio. The goal of this project is to assist growers in identifying hop varieties that demand fewer inputs, thereby contributing to a smaller environmental footprint on their farms. Simultaneously, this effort is designed to empower brewing customers with insightful information, enabling them to make informed choices based on environmental metrics in addition to aroma, when selecting hops for their flagship and seasonal beers.
This project would require students to convert grower data into carbon emissions, following a recognized and validated emissions standard. The grower input data will include spray applications, fuel usage, and energy use associated with growing and processing hops at the farm. This project would require students to perform an in-depth analysis of the impacts of growing hops at the farm-level and provide best practices for creating a life cycle analysis for hop varieties.
Join us on this journey towards sustainable brewing practices, where agronomics and sustainability intersect to redefine the landscape of the brewing industry.
Project Goals will include the following (to be scoped by the project team)
This project asks a lot of different question. Below are some keywords and search statements that may help you answer these questions.
To learn more about developing keywords and search strings check out this link.
Example of Potential Search:
Note: The following keywords and search strings were just a quick ideas I came up with. You may come up with better ones within your group.
Search #1
Title: hops
AND
Title: spray* OR watering
Here is what that search looks like in the WSU Libraries' catalog (link)
Search #2
Title: hops
AND
Title: sustain* OR emission* OR footprint OR pollut*
Here is what that search looks like in the WSU Libraries' catalog (link)
Search #3
Title: hops
AND
Title: "pacific northwest" OR PNW OR oregon OR palouse OR "eastern washington" OR "columbia plateau" OR "columbia basin" OR Washington
AND
Any Field: farm* OR grow* OR crop* OR harvest*
Here is what that search looks like in the WSU Libraries' catalog (link)
Find Peer-Reviewed Research
Arguably the overall best STEM database.
Search It is the WSU library catalog. You can search among many different types of resources and order materials from other institutions if they are not immediately available through WSU.
A small, agriculture specific, database provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library.
SciFinder Scholar
Heavy on the chemistry side of research. It works best with Internet Explorer. First time users MUST register. Powerful, if not always intuitive, search options.
If you are interested in seeing a full list of agricultural databases available at WSU check out this link.
If you want to see all of the databases available, across disciplines, check out this link.
For your project, you may need to examine corporate and industry profiles, trade publications, press releases, laws and court cases. etc.
Below are a few corporate and business databases to get you started.
Helpful Industry Resources
For more in-depth information regarding corporate research, take a look at the WSU Libraries Company Research Library Guide.
Here are a few links to assist you with finding legitimate data regarding hops and carbon emissions
Government Agencies
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service will provide data for crops and regions.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture also provides data regarding crops, acreage, etc.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has abundant reports and data regarding greenhouse gas emissions, etc.
Other
Hop Growers of America reports and data. For example, take a look at their 2021 Statistical Report (PDF) which has a wide range of data within it.
Yakima Chief Hops has some good resources on their website, such as this info on local hop varieties.
Part of your project will be understanding the historic context regarding hops. Below are some resources that will assist.
The WSU/WSC Cooperative Extension Services will provide historic and contemporary agricultural resources pertaining to Washington State. Many of these resources have been digitized but many others are only located within the Owen Science Library.
Note: You can find Extension (and other WSU) research a couple of different ways. Theoretically, there should be overlap between the following databases but in practice it is useful to search them all.
You can search the WSU Libraries' catalog and limit your results to Washington State University and/or Washington State University Cooperative Extension within the "Author" limiter. Here's a picture of how to do that.
Research Exchange is the institutional repository at WSU. It will have a lot of historic resources but also some contemporary research. Here is a 'Title' search for "hops".
The WSU Cooperative Extension Service also provides a list of contemporary publications. It may also be useful to look at the University of Idaho's Extension publications.
Finally, you may want to look at the resources within archive.org and the HathiTrust repository.
Finding extension research done by other institutions can be tricky (but worthwhile). For example, here is an article from the University of Vermont Extension titled Sustainable-Hop-Production-in-the-Great-Lakes-Region (PDF).
Currently, a group of librarians are creating a centralized extension database. Until it is completed you can search the National Agriculture Library's database PubAg or use Google. You can also email me for assistance.
Newspaper and Trade Publications
For more info, see the WSU Libraries News and Newspaper Research Guide.
Claudia Salanță, L., Corina Fărcaş, A., Borșa, A., & Rodica Pop, C. (2023). Current strategies for the management of valuable compounds from hops waste for a circular economy. Food Chemistry, 19. See article here.
Jones, K. (2022). The hops capital of the world is in Eastern Washington. Seattle Magazine. See article here.
Kopeć, M.H., et al. (2022). Biological activity of composts obtained from hop waste generated during the brewing. Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery, 12(4), 1271–1279. See article here.
Shin, R., & Searcy, C. (2018). Evaluating the greenhouse gas emissions in the craft beer industry: An assessment of challenges and benefits of greenhouse gas accounting. Sustainability, 10(11), See article here.
Sudermann, H. (2007). Hops & beer. Washington State Magazine. Link to article.
Yakima Chief Hops. (2024). Corporate responsibility reports. Reports from 2016 - 2021. Link to reports.