A year ago, half of the U.S. sorghum crop was exported. This year, only a quarter of it is headed overseas due to the U.S.-China trade war, which means the sorghum stockpile will double by the time the new crop is ready for harvest this summer. USDA’s monthly Grains: World Markets and Trade report says the sorghum inventory will be the largest in 13 years.
“The pace of sales and shipments has been slow with the absence of China since the start of the (current) marketing year,” said the USDA. As part of the trade war, China put a 25 percent tariff on U.S. sorghum. “Although U.S. sorghum remains competitive even with the tariff, trade tensions and commercial risk have turned away potential demand,” said the report.
Sorghum is a distant second to corn in U.S. feed grain production. The 2018 crop totaled 365 million bushels compared to 14.4 billion bushels of corn. The sorghum stockpile, 35 million bushels at the start of this marketing year, is expected to grow to 65 million bushels by year’s end. The most prominent agricultural casualty of the trade, soybeans, also is accumulating rapidly because China is out of the market. The soybean stockpile is forecast to swell to 900 million bushels by late August, double the 435 million bushels on hand at the start of the 2018/19 trade year.