News
Sinagua Malt News will focus on market solutions to river conservation challenges, primarily in the West. News articles will feature innovative approaches to conservation by private enterprise, governmental entities, nonprofit organizations, or partnerships thereof. We hope that you find the content of interest!
The Nature Conservancy
Barley Dreams
An Arizona town gambles on beer to save water.
Kim Schonek stands at the edge of the barley field, keeping a wary eye out for a rattlesnake she saw nearby the other day. The soft, green barley stands chest-high, swaying in the warm winds of the Verde Valley. In another week, it’ll begin to dry out under the June Arizona sun.
“Soon it’ll be amber waves of grain,” she says with a smirk. Everyone makes that joke around here, in the small town of Camp Verde. Barley, in this region full of alfalfa and field corn, has lately become the talk of the town.
The Nature Conservancy
How Growing Barley for Beer Could Help Save the Verde River
Sinagua Malt House is teaming up with farmers and brewers to create demand for less water intensive crops.
Chip Norton prefers being on the water to anything else. Moving his boat through the rapids and observing nature helps to clear his head. That’s why he was devastated to think the Verde River could stop flowing during Arizona’s summers, due to increasing water demand, drought and climate changes.
“The river is my happy place,” says Chip, a river recreationist turned conservationist. “I’ve rafted in Alaska and fly-fished in Idaho. Nothing compares to the Verde when it comes to diversity.”
PERC (Property and Environment Research Center)
Brewing Water Conservation in the West
A new market in Arizona shows how small innovations can help conserve water in the West—and why many more will be needed in the Colorado River Basin
“When you start to build houses and stop growing cotton, you’re going to save a lot of water.” With that quip, Kim Schonek sums up how Arizona’s population has managed to blossom in the middle of the arid West while reducing its water use at the same time. Since 1980, the population of Phoenix has more than doubled, yet total water use has decreased by about one-third.
Some back-of-the-envelope math helps demonstrate how: An acre of cotton needs about 3 acre-feet of water, or roughly the same amount of water to meet the needs of six average Arizona families. If 100 acres of cotton fields were converted into subdivisions with quarter-acre lots, water use would decline by roughly a third.
ABC15 Arizona
Beer makers teaming up to protect Arizona’s water supply
CAMP VERDE, AZ — The next time you grab a nice, cold beer, you may want to ask the brewer what work went into that glass.
There is a unique partnership happening in Arizona between farmers, those involved in the malting process, and brewers that is saving thousands of gallons of water from being taken from the Verde River.
One of those taking part in this water-conservation effort is farmer Kevin Hauser in Camp Verde.
“Well, you know, a typical day… some aren’t so typical,” laughed Hauser.
Craft Beer.com
There’s No Taste Like Home: Booming Beer Agriculture Supports Local Brewers
Long before your favorite beer reaches a tap or bottle, beer is an agricultural product. From the Mid-Atlantic to the Arizona desert, craft beer is at the center of the “going local” movement that extends far beyond the breweries themselves.
“People want to know and should know where their food, including beer, comes from,” says Tom Barse, the owner and brewer of Milkhouse Brewing in Mt. Airy, Maryland, one of the brewers grasping the trend. “In addition to helping us make the best beer possible we are putting money right back into our local farms.”
Barse and Chapman are on the front line of an emerging movement to unite grain and hop farmers, malthouses, universities, and brewers “going local,” serving the blossoming growth of small, community breweries across the country. This nascent infrastructure is sprinkled with creative brewers, startup malthouses, farmers looking for diversity and willing to take a chance, and even persons promoting heritage grains and hops.
National Geographic
Farmers, Brewers, and Conservationists Partner to Keep a River Flowing
The fact that a pint of beer requires a whopping 37 gallons (140 liters) of water to produce can turn a favorite beverage into a guilty pleasure.
But what if, instead, each hoppy sip helped add flow to a depleted river?
If all goes according to plan that will soon happen in Arizona’s Verde River, a flowing gem in the Colorado River Basin and a lifeline for fish, birds and wildlife in the American Southwest. But like many western rivers, the Verde flows low, and in some stretches not at all, during the hot summer months, when farmers divert water to irrigate crops.
And that gave Chip Norton, a retired businessman and river enthusiast, an idea: switch a portion of the valley’s farmland from crops like corn that are thirstiest in summer to barley, which grows earlier in the year and so requires much less water when the river is stressed.
KNAU (podcast)
Can Beer Help Save the Verde River?
Arizona’s Verde River has a lot of competing uses: city dwellers, farmers, kayakers and environmentalists all want its water in different ways. But a new project aims to unite everyone over a glass of beer. A farm in Camp Verde has planted a crop of malt barley, to conserve water and give Arizona breweries a key ingredient to craft a truly local beer. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports.
KJZZ (podcast)
Arizona Farm Helping Beer Lovers, Water Conservation
Switching crops on a Verde Valley farm has helped lead to the state’s first malt house opening up. Sinagua Malt in Camp Verde says it’ll produce four tons of malted barley a week for breweries and bakeries sourced from barley grown at Hauser and Hauser Farms. The 600-acre farm once grew corn but has now swapped its crop for barley and, in the process, has potentially saved millions of gallons of water in the Verde River. Zach Hauser, a fourth-generation farmer at Hauser Farms, joined The Show to talk about it.
The Nature Conservancy (press release)
Cutting Edge Water Markets Support Farming and Preserve Precious Resources
For years, states in the western U.S. have faced record-setting droughts, putting pressure on local communities, economies, and businesses. According to many seasonal predictions and forecasts, these droughts are expected to continue or worsen over the course of the summer.
Western states continue to have to balance weather and climate conditions with the need to preserve water for people to drink, industrial use, and other sectors, including agriculture. To help address some of these challenges, The Nature Conservancy and partners in California and Arizona are looking to create new markets to support economic development and agricultural production with the need to conserve and preserve water resources.
azfamily.com
Arizona’s first malt house helps keep the Verde River and local beer flowing
Customers at the Wren House brewery in Phoenix might not realize it, but when they draw a draft here, they are helping make sure water still flows some 100 miles to the north in the Verde River.
That is because at Hauser and Hauser Farms in the Verde Valley, they have now started growing acre after acre of barley, grown all spring long and replacing the traditional summer corn they usually grow.
Arizona Daily Sun
Verde River advocates look to craft beer to save the desert river’s flows
It may be just the start of the growing season in Flagstaff, but fields at Zach Hauser’s Verde Valley farm are already blanketed with bright green barley plants. Nearing a foot tall, this barley crop is the biological starting point of a new project that links farmers and craft brewers, conservation initiative and commercial endeavor, all in an effort to restore flows to the Verde River.
Phoenix News Times
Connection Saison at Arizona Wilderness Brewery Is An Entirely “Arizona Born” Ale
Since opening about three years ago, Arizona Wilderness Brewery has established itself as one of the best, most interesting breweries in the state… All of which is to say, it should come as little surprise that the innovative brewhouse has now produced an entirely “Arizona-born” ale. Called Connection Saison, this beer features both malt and hops grown right here in the Grand Canyon State. The Belgian-style beer was made with a malt grown in the Verde Valley and hops harvested in Elgin, which have been brought to create a Farmhouse Saison ale.
National Geographic
Young Farmer Saves Water in Innovative Ways
Arizona farmer Zach Hauser says the Verde River “holds the key to our future around here. Without it there probably wouldn’t be any farming here at all.”
Hauser takes water seriously. Because his farm sits on dry land in central Arizona, Hauser relies on the Verde River, as do most residents of the small town of Camp Verde, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Phoenix. His 600-acre family farm is one of the largest users of water in the area, and he treats conservation as a personal responsibility.
Camp Verde Bugle
Verde River brings businesses, residents together to reduce water use
A groundbreaking initiative is aiming to preserve our most valuable asset through collaboration and cooperation between non-profits, businesses and residents.
The shared goal: protect the Verde River, Oak Creek, and Arizona’s future water supplies.
Friends of Verde River Greenway and its partners are teaming up with Arizona winemakers, residents, and businesses to establish the Verde River Exchange. The Exchange connects residents and businesses in the Verde Valley willing to temporarily reduce their water use with others seeking to offset the impacts of their groundwater pumping. The collaborative project offers potential to reverse the decline of water levels and bolster river flows while promoting sustainable economic development.
Friends of the Verde River Greenway
Almost $3 Million Awarded to Benefit Verde River
The Verde River Flow and Riparian Restoration Initiative was awarded $2.8M in funding from the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), a new program under the 2014 Farm Bill administered by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
“This grant will allow us to realize our vision to protect, restore and conserve the Verde, one of our state’s important rivers,” said Kim Schonek, Verde River project manager for The Nature Conservancy in Arizona. “This award will build on investments and collaborative efforts of conservation, community and agricultural interests along the river.”
Read full article (.pdf)
Craftbeer.com
Kannah Creek Brewing to Begin Contract Brewing for a Cause
GRAND JUNCTION, CO (June 14, 2016) Kannah Creek Brewing Company announces partnership with Many Rivers Brewing Company to contract brew at Kannah Creek’s production facility located at 905 Struthers Avenue Grand Junction, CO.
Many Rivers Brewing Company is a Colorado public benefit corporation giving all beer sales’ profits to organizations who work to improve rivers. Tim Carlson, Many Rivers’ President has worked over the past 15 years with watershed groups throughout the West and is the driving force behind this venture.