USA: Coors move brews up headaches for farmers

Barley growers for Molson Coors Brewing Co. will have a lot farther to drive to drop off their harvest - more than 80 miles to Worland - now that the company has closed its barley receiving station here, Associated Press posted on March 3.

The Golden-based brewer told its contract farmers in the Big Horn Basin about the closing with the offering of this year's contracts. At Ralston, barley was loaded onto railroad cars and shipped to the Coors elevator in Worland.

With the station's closing, farmers will need access to bigger and better trucks and also will need to buy more fuel for those trucks. Additionally, they will have to spend more time on the road that otherwise could be spent in the combine.

For some farmers, it just isn't worth it. "It just didn't pay for us," said Perry Fisher of Cox and Fisher Farms. Fisher said Coors offered "a little mileage" reimbursement, but that didn't quite make the contract feasible. "It wasn't enough, we didn't think," he said. He planned to make up for the barley contract by planting more dry beans and sugar beets.

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