LANSING, Mich. – Calling all Michigan producers of apples, blueberries, grapes and peaches. The Michigan Craft Beverage Council is recruiting farms for a statewide crop directory with the goal of supporting the state’s agricultural supply chain in the craft beverage industry.

 “The crops that we primarily will focus on for the craft beverage industry are going to be apples, grapes, blueberries, peaches and some of the stone fruits, but also hops and we’re also looking at different botanicals,” said Jenelle Jagmin, Director of the Michigan Craft Beverage Council.

 Jagmin says it will allow businesses to source more Michigan-grown crops down to the regional level.

 “It’s still in creation form, and we’ve recently just launched it online and we’ve been populating it with farms, but this is a project we’re just going to continue to build and build over years,” she said.

 The Michigan Craft Beverage Council is a 10-member, governor-appointed board that is advisory to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The mission of the Council is to advance a well-connected craft beverage industry through research, promotion and agricultural business development, reinforcing Michigan as a world-class craft beverage destination.

 “The Michigan Craft Beverage Council supports a hard-working, collaborative industry with deep agricultural roots,” Jagmin said. “We provide resources and opportunities that connect growers and producers.”

 According to Jagmin, there are 300-plus brewers in Michigan, roughly 3,000 acres of wine and grape vineyards in the state, and three million pounds of grain and fruit from the state is used by craft distillers.

 “The Council was formed in 2018 and over the years we’ve invested $1.7 million into research,” Jagmin said. “We’ve performed good research into hops, wine grapes and grains as well, and we’ve learned a lot about pests and funguses through our corn and cereal rye variety trials. We’ve gathered a lot of data through this research. We take this research to inform the farmers what they should be planting and what’s going to help the brewers and distillers in the best way possible. Overall, we do well with beer, wine and distilled spirits in this state.”

“Right now, the craft directory is specific to specialty crops,” she said. “We want this directory to be ongoing, building, and a place where we can keep information so when a craft brewery business is looking to source, say, some peaches to make a wine or other specialty product or specialty beer they can not only look into the directory and find who has peaches available but also search by region and make that contact a bit closer to home.”

“Here at the Michigan Craft Beverage Council we’ve had to work hard to develop our identity. We’re unique in this country. There are no craft beverage councils out there to model our work after.

 “The next two years we want to grow more of a consumer promotional strategy. We want to tell people why they should support Michigan-grown fruits, what makes Michigan craft brews unique and what this state does well. After all, Michigan is a diverse growing state and has a lot to offer to the craft beverage sector.”