Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 1 (2022), p. 142

Marsha O’Mahony’s book is an excellent social history of the hop industry, underpinned by meticulous research into the phases of the hop-growing year, based on a rich archive of oral history, much of which was recorded by herself, and photographic evidence and illustrations. Her book shifts the focus from Kent to the West Midlands and border counties as the centre of the hop industry. Hop and fruit-growing were often carried out side by side and for this reviewer there are some interesting comparisons to be drawn between these two small industries, which had such a big impact on rural life.

Like fruit-growing, hop cultivation was an intensive form of horticulture, with its own special skills and knowledge, which was passed through generations. It also transformed the farming landscape, with its dense pattern of hop poles and supporting frameworks upon which to train the plants, which grew perennially. This book shows how hop yards were constructed and maintained and how materials and techniques changed over time.

The centrepiece of the book is the necessarily long and detailed chapter on hop-picking – harvest time. Until just after the Second World War, hop growers employed a large seasonal army of pickers, drawn from the traveling community and from poorer districts of nearby urban areas (South Wales and Birmingham). For a short, intense season hop-picking connected town and country, urban and rural, in a way which no longer exists. The author looks at how the pickers were recruited and organized, how they were accommodated and cared for, how they worked, what they were paid, why they did it. Post-war mechanization of hop-picking brought about a revolution in the industry, drastically reducing the labour requirement for harvesting, but not for the care and maintenance of the hop yards. There is an interesting chapter on the British engineering firms who developed the new picking machinery, starting just before the war, and how this gradually took over the picking process in the late 1940s and 1950s.

At the end of the hop-growing year there is the process of drying, an arcane, magical process, with its own skilled workforce, operating the kilns, which were such a distinctive feature of hop-growing districts. A chapter on hop-drying describes this process in excellent detail, through to the bagging and bailing of the finished product, ready for brewing. Again we see the replacement of traditional methods through the introduction of new techniques, automation and modern sensing equipment to control temperature and humidity.

The marketing of hops is then considered and here we have a brief summary of the economic history of hop-growing, which could have been developed further, or perhaps here is scope for a different book. The chain of distribution was a complicated one, in which hop factors graded and sold the hops on behalf of growers to merchants who acted on behalf of the brewers. There was no direct selling from producer to customer. The process of buying and selling took place in wholesale markets, such as the Corn Exchange in Worcester. Comparisons with fruit growers are interesting, as they often engaged in direct selling locally or to fruit processors under contracts, but also sold on commission to agents and wholesalers, who carried out a grading function, operating in wholesale markets in large urban areas. Some brewers, such as Guinness, maintained their own hop farms, and we see the same vertical integration in the fruit industry, with jam makers such as Chivers & Sons Ltd, and Wilkin & Sons Ltd, managing their own orchard land.

The author notes the decline in the hop acreage from a late nineteenth-century highpoint of 77,000 acres to 16,500 by 1932, due to foreign imports and new tastes for lighter ales, which reduced demand for traditional domestic hops. This pushed growers into voting for the creation of a Hop Marketing Board. The Board fixed guaranteed prices with the brewers and allocated quotas for growers, which helped to stabilize the industry. At this time fruit growers were also being pressured by government and the NFU to adopt a marketing board, which was firmly rejected in a ballot in 1935. Fruit growers looked askance at the controls hop growers now faced. Instead, a number of fruit cooperatives were set up on a county basis, to pool grading, packing and selling. This trend strengthened in the post-1945 period. This did not occur in the hop industry until well after entry to the European Economic Community (EEC), when in 1982 the Hop Marketing Board was deemed a monopoly in violation of EEC trade laws. Five grower-led hop cooperatives were formed, now reduced to three, members of the British Hop Association, formed in 1996.

There is a good chapter on the brewing industry, which describes the renaissance in independent micro-breweries in more recent times and the positive impact this has had on hop-growing. A final chapter focuses on hop research and developments in the future. This considers the history of control of pests and diseases from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, which parallel similar methods adopted by fruit growers. Much of this research and plant breeding took place at the hop department of Wye Agricultural College, later privatized as Wye Crops Ltd, under the aegis of the British Hop Association. The most significant recent development in hop breeding has been the introduction of dwarf varieties, now accounting for 23% of the domestic acreage. A similar trend has occurred in the modern fruit industry, replacing the traditional orchard with intensive plantings of dwarf spindle bushes, quick to grow to maturity, cheaper to manage, spray and harvest. Dwarf hops have led to similar changes in crop management systems and harvesting, with the introduction of new mobile picking machines. In order to survive, both the hop and fruit industries have been innovative, open to new techniques and practices, based on sound practical science. Marsha O’Mahony’s book is in itself an essential archive on the hop industry, whilst offering an optimistic vision of its future, albeit it on a small scale.