by Megan Durisin, Jeff Wilson, Lydia Mulvany (Bloomberg) … A kernel-yielding stalk that’s native to Africa, sorghum has three things going for it right now: it’s cheap to plant; it holds up better in drought-like conditions than other crops; and most importantly, demand is soaring in China, where farmers feed the plant to their hog herds, and moonshiners make it into a whiskey-like liquor called baijiu. While corn, soybeans and wheat slumped into bear markets last year amid a global supply glut, sorghum prices have held stable.
“As far as an alternative crop, it’s so much better than anything else right now,” said Clayton Short, a 53-year-old farmer in Assaria, Kansas.
Short plans to sow sorghum on 650 acres this year, an increase of about 30 percent from 2014 and the most in the six decades that his family has been growing the grain. Total U.S. sorghum plantings will climb 11 percent this year to 7.9 million acres, a jump made possible in part by cutbacks on corn, wheat and especially cotton, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday.
…
The Bloomberg Commodity Index has tumbled 27 percent in the past year, including 24 percent for corn, the biggest domestic crop, to $3.81 a bushel in Chicago. Wheat slumped 27 percent, soybeans tumbled 34 percent, and cotton plunged 33 percent.
Some farmers in Kansas are being offered 35 cents a bushel more for sorghum planted this spring than corn, according to Dan O’Brien, an economist at Kansas State University in Manhattan. The state is the biggest U.S. grower. The cash price for sorghum delivered in Kansas City slid 0.7 percent in the past 12 months.
China stepped up purchases of U.S. sorghum in 2013 to supplement domestic production, which the USDA expects will remain steady this season as imports surge 68 percent to 7 million metric tons, the most ever.
…
It will cost $142 an acre to grow sorghum this year, including seed, fertilizer and chemicals, the USDA estimates. Cotton will be $497.26, corn $350.33, and soybeans $181.07.
John Bondurant, who owns 4,300 acres in Mississippi and Arkansas, said he’ll increase sorghum plantings fivefold to 1,000 acres, displacing soybeans and wheat. He can deliver sorghum in September at 85 cents a bushel more than corn, offering the highest return of any of his crops. READ MORE and MORE (AgWeek)