Thanks to strong demand from China, drought-hardy sorghum is selling for a higher price in the Plains than corn, which usually is the price leader, says David Widmar. The comparatively high price is likely to lead to larger plantings. A Farm Futures survey of growers early this month indicated an 18-percent increase in plantings, to 8.4 million acres. Writing at the blog Agricultural Economics Insights, Widmar says the sorghum belt usually stretches from the western two-thirds of Kansas to the southwestern panhandle plains of Texas.
Forty years ago, sorghum was commonly grown from southern Nebraska through central Texas to the Gulf Coast. Based on that history, Widmar says, “we can surmise that any increase in sorghum acres on a national scale will most likely happen from a combination of producers in the West Panhandle of Texas and Western Kansas planting more acres, and producers in Eastern Kansas and Southern Nebraska re-introducing the crop into their rotation.” The USDA will release its annual Prospective Plantings report, drawn from a survey of 80,000 growers, on March 31.