Northern Montana Barley Field Day

Jun 05, 2023

Molson Coors executive Pete Coors poses with Cordell Ostberg of Fairfield after the company presented Ostberg with a 2022 top grower award for the BC100 barley variety at its Northern Montana Barley Field Day July 19 in Choteau.

The Molson Coors Beverage Co. celebrated top local producers at its Northern Montana Barley Field Day in Choteau July 19 and told farmers that it is enjoying higher sales in the wake of the political controversy around competitor Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Bud Light marketing with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney last March.

As around 200 farmers and their families enjoyed a barbecued brisket supper prepared by Bylers Bakery in Choteau, Wade Malchow of Huntley, senior manager of the Molson Coors barley program, said crops in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and southern Colorado look very good this year — and that’s a good thing because more people are drinking Molson Coors’ brand beers including Coors Banquet, Coors Light, Blue Moon Belgian White, Miller and Miller Lite, Molson Canadian and others.

“I don’t know whether anybody’s noticed, but we’re selling a little beer,” Malchow said, referring to current news reports, and earning a round of applause from the growers.

According to Forbes.com, Bud Light sales were down more than 20% at the end of April as conservatives across the country launched boycotts of the beer. However, Forbes.com said, Bud Light’s sales drop in the United States represented just 1% of the international corporation’s global sales in April, and the company’s first-quarter profits were still up 14% compared to the last year.

The boycotts have resulted, however, in pushing Bud Light out of its spot as the top-selling beer brand in the U.S.

Malchow said he was not optimistic about this year’s barley crop after this year’s cold, wet spring, which delayed planting two to four weeks in most regions, but the growing season has been good this summer. “I think we have a pretty darn good crop coming,” he said.

He said his company would need every bit of the crops produced this summer. “Every kernel counts,” he said, adding that he wanted producers to be enthusiastic about harvest this year.

“I want you to go home excited about what you’re doing,” he said, adding that the barley producers are in this business to have fun and make money.

“Take good care of it [the crop] as we cross the finish line, folks,” he said.

Malchow was among more than a dozen regional and national Molson Coors executives who attended the field day. Montana regional manager Cody Shick, who works at the Molson Coors elevator in Power and lives in Choteau, welcomed those attending to the event.

“The reason we are here is to thank you barley growers for all that you do,” Shick said. “As you know barley is the first step in this deal.”

In 2023, he said, Molson Coors has contracted with growers to purchase 250 million pounds of high-grade malting barley. Montana is the second biggest area of production for Molson Coors, he said.

Dave Bernier, left, and Shannon Ambrosio with Golden Malting show how beer is brewed and talk with Jason Boose, the barley program regional manager for Idaho and Wyoming.

Throwing out some barley brewing trivia, Shick said the average farmer in Montana produces enough barley for 1 million cases of beer. “That’s pretty phenomenal,” he said, adding that nationwide 30% of the beer produced is made with Montana malting barley.

An average 115 bushel per acre yield on irrigated land produces 4,400 cases or 105,000 cans of beer. An average 50 to 60 bushel per acre yield on dryland produces 1,900 cases or 46,000 cans of beer, Shick said.

Shick encouraged the growers to talk with Shannon Ambrosio and Dave Bernier with Golden Malting, who had set up a demonstration on the process of malting barley and brewing beer.

“When you are bringing barley into the elevator and we have to go talk about protein or plump, it’s so that when we get that thing to the malt house it performs like it should, it’s efficient and it makes great beer,” Shick said.

Brian Erhardt, chief supply chain operator for Molson Coors, said the company employs 6,000 people in Canada, the U.S. and Latin America to brew, package and ship beer. Every day, the company’s breweries in the U.S. are making 50 million 12-ounce servings of beer.

“Our breweries are working like crazy right now and we hope to keep that demand up going forward,” he said, adding that the company can’t make great beer without the great barley that Montana and other producers grow.

Peter Coors, director of G150 Commissioning and Operations, told the group that the company is capitalizing on Bud Light drinkers who are giving Coors a try and are finding out why it’s a great beer. “We’ve got a lot of beer to the lips this summer,” he said, adding that the company wants to make sure those beer drinkers switch to Coors permanently.

He also noted that the Coors part of the company is celebrating 150 years of beer production in Golden, Colorado, where his great-great-great-grandfather established the company in 1873.

Coors said he is leading a major renovation of the company’s brewing facilities to meet global standards, using less energy and less water to produce beer, making the operation more efficient and competitive.

Growers who attended the event said they are pleased to work with Molson Coors and glad to see much better crops this year.

Aaron Leys, who farms north of Choteau, said the barley and wheat crops in this area are looking “amazing” and are so nice to see after the past two years of extreme drought that killed whole fields and caused many ranchers to sell cattle because they couldn’t raise enough hay to feed them.

He said the wet spring did delay planting and he only got his seeding done by the last week in May instead of the usual April 20, but the timely rains have made the crops flourish.

Leys said Molson Coors is an easy company to work with, describing his interactions with Shick as more like a friendship than a business relationship. (It doesn’t hurt, he said, that he lives just a few doors down the block from Shick and they both serve on the Choteau Volunteer Fire Department.)

Shick presented top grower awards in the form of custom belt buckles for 2019, 2021 and 2022. The awards honored farmers for their high delivery percentage and excellent quality in each variety grown in northern Montana.

Awards were given to Spencer Ratliff of Fairfield for 2019, growing the BC100 variety and to Inbody Farms of Choteau, run by Scott Inbody for 2019, growing M165. For 2020, Dean Pearson and Mark Coverdell of Fairfield were honored for growing BC100 and Terry McWilliams of Fairfield for growing M15.

The 2021 winners were Matt and Bob DeBruycker of Bynum and Fairfield for BC100 and the Styren Farm from Brady for M165. The 2022 winners were Chris and Cordell Ostberg of Fairfield for growing BC100 and the Swenson Farms for growing M165.

Cordell Ostberg said his crops are looking good again this year. Lots of moisture in early spring gave the crop a jump start. Like Leys, he said this year’s growing season is a complete about-face compared to last year, when nothing even came up. He noted that his father, Chris, won a top producer award in 2013 and now, 10 years later, the farm has won again.

His grandfather, Ron Ostberg, said having both Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev active in Teton County gives growers choices. Coors was in the county in the late 1960s, but then left, and Ostberg said he remembers traveling to Coors’ headquarters in 1969-70 to try to convince the company to come back — something that didn’t happen until decades later.