Barley Production in California

Barley was brought to California by the Spanish padres via Mexico and was cultivated on mission lands since at least 1771 [7] . Until 1860, when it was surpassed by wheat, barley was the most important grain grown by the early American settlers in California [1] . It was the principle feed grain for livestock, and malting barley was also the basis for an early California export trade with Great Britain [8] . Production grew steadily through the 1800s (Figure 1). Around the turn of the century, the wheat boom fueled by the population growth after the Gold Rush began to decline in part due to soil exhaustion. Barley is comparatively saltand drought-tolerant and its acreage grew as to some extent it replaced wheat. The increasing use of irrigation and expansion of high-value fruit and nut crops contributed to a general reduction in the importance of grains and hay in California agriculture as a whole over the course of the 1900s. The passage of Prohibition also contributed to barley's decline in favor of other crops [5] . However, as Prohibition ended and barley's value as a rotation crop became recognized, barley acreage rose through the 30s and 40s, and it ranked as California's 8 th most important commodity in 1950 [5, 6] . Production peaked in 1955 at nearly 2 million acres; however, it has since declined steadily, with only 80,000 acres of barley harvested in 2013 (Figure 1) [10] . This decline is related to competition from higher value crops, fueled by rising incomes and improvements in transportation and cooling technology after World War II, as well as the increasing diversity of California agriculture [6] . In addition, after 1970 there rose a trend towards uniformity in the malting barley industry that excluded California varieties, which differ in malting characteristics from those grown in the larger malting barley producing areas of the Midwest and Great Plains [7] .