Anheuser-Busch Grower Days Brews Barley Innovation in the Heartland of Beer

Today, Anheuser-Busch is celebrating the hard-working men and women who nurture our barley from the ground up at our annual Grower Days event in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Grower Days is our opportunity to bring barley growers and innovators together to share cutting-edge technologies and seed research to produce the best possible barley for our beers in a smart and sustainable way while supporting the local communities that make our beer possible.

Growers will have the opportunity to share best practices, learn about initiatives like our SmartBarley program which helps growers produce the most “crop per drop” of water, the AgriMet irrigation scheduler – giving growers real-time access to weather and water data, and the latest seed research to create varieties that can withstand disease requiring less fungicide use and other varieties designed to adapt to drought and other extreme weather conditions.

The Grower Days event will also take growers and other partners behind the scenes of our world-class Moorhead Malt Plant to see how we have been using state-of-the art technology to process eight million bushels of barley in Moorhead every year since 1978.

The best beer needs the highest quality ingredients at every step of the brewing process. As one of the 5 key ingredients, high quality barley gives beer its beautiful range of colors, its sweetness, alcohol component, unmistakable aroma and ultimately, the flavor we all know and love.

Across the upper Midwest region of the United States, we work hand-in-hand with over 1,000 barley growers who share our passion for using only the best ingredients. In fact, 99.5% of the barley we use in our beer is grown in America by communities of growers, like Moorhead, across the country.

“As the heartland of the United States of Beer, the growers in Moorhead and across the country provide the vital ingredients needed for the beer brewed at all 12 of our U.S. breweries,” said Alan Slater, Director Midwest Barley Operations at Anheuser-Busch .  “Whether you're drinking a beer brewed in New York or California, these growers made it possible.”

We're determined to keep these U.S. barley-growing communities thriving. The technologies and innovations we're showcasing and sharing with growers at our Minnesota Grower Days event help growers produce the highest quality yields with less water, energy, and emissions than ever before.

For more than 160 years, we have taken great pride in brewing great-tasting beers with a hands-on approach to brewing– from seed to sip.