There’s a Gigantic Beer Crisis in Venezuela

Venezuela has a very monopolized beer market; Polar, a company which makes all kinds of food in addition to beer, holds an 80 percent marketshare. And in April, all of its breweries were shut down.

Beer can be made from basically any cereal – rice, wheat, corn – but most commonly it’s made from malted barley, a temperate cereal most commonly found in colder areas. (The top producer in the world, with almost twice as much production as the runner-up, is Russia.) Barley doesn’t grow in Venezuela, and Polar’s beer is, like most other beers, reliant on the barley crop. In the past that’s not any more of a problem than it is for Maxwell House to be an American company producing coffee: just import it.

But the Venezuelan government also controls all imports and exports, and Polar, according to NPR, has been unable to import the barley it needs from other countries. This is, to be fair, a much bigger problem for food than it is for beer; the country is facing a severe food shortage, with one study finding that 12 percent of the country is unable to afford three meals a day.

The reason for the shortage is complex, partly due to the complicated and restrictive laws on foreign currency and partly due to the country’s reliance on its oil industry at the expense of agriculture. But to address outrage at the lack of beer, the country’s president, NicolÁ¡s Maduro, has claimed that Polar is deliberately halting production at the behest of enemy powers (like the United States) to disrupt the Venezuelan economy. Polar, for its part, has expressed bafflement at the accusations.

There seems to be an end in sight, at least for Polar; Reuters reports that the company has secured a loan for $35 million from Spanish bank BBVA that will allow it to begin importing raw materials again, both for food and beer. But this seems a temporary solution at best.