YCR had its first meeting with Oasis Farms, Inc. in late 2014. At that point, the farm had a grand total of 130 acres of hops. In our first meeting, Brenton Roy, President of Oasis Farms indicated that his farm was strongly considering getting out of hops. “We were considering exiting because of the historical volatility of the market, and we weren’t built for growing our hop operation; we had weak hop management and outdated facilities, and we didn’t see how we could stay in it anymore.” After that meeting, Oasis Farms decided to double down and build up a world class hop operation, in smart incremental improvements. “We saw an opportunity in the Yakima Chief supply chain not to just stay in the industry, but to come back in and build our team up to be the best.”
Oasis Farms committed to invest, at a minimum, $1,000,000 per year of capital in to the operation, and slowly build up to produce the highest quality of hops. Roy, who was named the 2015 Good Fruit Grower ‘Grower of the Year,’ is no stranger to producing high quality agricultural products. Since 2014, Oasis Farms has done exactly what they have said, not only investing in infrastructure and the best possible growing sites, but also in new people. “You can buy any machinery you want, but if you don’t have the right people, it won’t work; you have to have the right people in place to get the job done, and that’s just what we’ve done,” he said. When asked why Oasis Farms has committed to reinvesting at the level they have, Roy said, “It’s the structure of the auto-renewing contract, it’s the revolutionary transparency of the Yakima Chief program. In four generations of farming hops, nobody in our family had ever been inside a brewery to meet with brewers until we grew for Yakima Chief.” Those relationships that have been developed with brewers are driving quality forward. “The word ‘quality’ has been thrown around for years, but it has never been shown to be that important until this relationship started. The connection with brewers has been impactful, knowing the importance of executing quality for them.”
Posted January 03, 2020