The promoting effect of Ba or Sr addition was investigated for furfural hydrogenation reaction over copper-chromium oxide catalysts. X-ray diffraction patterns showed the appearance of $BaCrO_4$ and $SrCrO_4$ phases in Ba, and Sr promoted copper-chromium oxide catalysts. For both Ba and Sr promoted catalysts, the activity decline with reaction time was much smaller compared to that of unpromoted catalyst and copper-chromium oxide catalyst dispersed on silica, reproducible EPR signals of Cr(V) were observed when CO was adsorbed. The promoting effect of Ba addition can be interpreted in terms of active sites dispersion and stabilization.