What’s a gluten-free, drought-tolerant grain crop?

It’s sorghum, one of the major grain crops of the world yet eclipsed in the United States by the expanding range of corn and soybeans. In Africa and parts of Asia, sorghum is a food crop but in the U.S. market, it is primarily used in livestock rations and as an ethanol feedstock, says the Whole Grains Council. It’s gaining some recognition as a gluten-free grain that can substitute for wheat flour in many recipes – muffins, pizza, cakes and casseroles are examples.

Sorghum plantings hit a low of 5.4 million acres in 2010 and have rebounded somewhat to 7.5 million acres this year. That’s one-fifth of the peak 27 million acres planted in 1957 that yielded 1.12 billion bushels, says economist Dave Widmar at the Agricultural Economics Insights blog. Sorghum gets good press as a water-thrifty crop, he writes, “But a variety of factors – including improved corn genetics – shifted acres away from sorghum.”

For policy-makers, the question is whether sorghum is a crop in long-term decline or one in renaissance.

The sorghum belt is in the central and southern Plains; Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are the major states. Corn yields are higher than sorghum in those states. USDA forecasts slightly higher farm-gate prices for corn than sorghum. Kansas has the largest sorghum plantings of any state but has more corn than sorghum.

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