There are still some uncertainties about the new Farm Bill that Congress is expected to pass when it returns to business next month, but there is one certainty above all others: It will eliminate direct payments to farmers and make subsidized crop insurance their main safety net. But there is great uncertainty about how that will affect grain sorghum, "the red-headed step child at the end of the farm bill table — all grown up and well, almost cool — and other specialty crops, reports David Rogers of Politico. (Photo of Texas sorghum by The Associated Press)
Sorghum, also called milo, is "as old as ancient Egypt, as modern as gluten-free diets," Rogers notes. "It will never
be as pretty as corn, but pheasants on the Great Plains love it for
habitat. And in an age of climate change, it’s the grain that endures
through drought and heat." So its future seems bright, but Rogers says the crop is "a window into the survival politics of small crops trying to hold on amid the dominance of corn" in American agriculture and farm policy.
"Target prices set in the House farm bill give sorghum a 25 cents-per-bushel differential over corn," expansion of which in the last decade has reduced sorghum plantings, Rogers writes. "But with cotton transitioning out of the commodity title and into a new revenue insurance program, sorghum worries about its future as a rotation crop in the South. And to hear growers tell it, the very scrappy nature of the plant works against it in terms of generating good yield numbers for its own crop insurance protection. Precious water resources like the Ogallala aquifer beneath the Great Plains would almost certainly be better protected with more sorghum and less irrigated corn. But those environmental concerns don’t add points for the bookkeepers at the Risk Management Agency, which oversees the federally subsidized crop insurance program."
“We pay a price for being a tough guy,” Tim Lust, chief executive officer of the National Sorghum Producers in Lubbock, Texas, told Rogers. “It’s an industry, and if you lose too many acres, you lose the capital investment that goes with that.”
Rogers suggests that producers of sorghum, barley lentils and other small grains need a lobbying alliance with those who raise fruits, vegetables, nuts and nursery stock. "Each camp still looks down its nose at the other," he writes. "But with the rise of the organic movement and greater emphasis on locally grown produce, specialty crops are an important political asset in competing for votes in a House with fewer and fewer rural districts." (Read more)
"Target prices set in the House farm bill give sorghum a 25 cents-per-bushel differential over corn," expansion of which in the last decade has reduced sorghum plantings, Rogers writes. "But with cotton transitioning out of the commodity title and into a new revenue insurance program, sorghum worries about its future as a rotation crop in the South. And to hear growers tell it, the very scrappy nature of the plant works against it in terms of generating good yield numbers for its own crop insurance protection. Precious water resources like the Ogallala aquifer beneath the Great Plains would almost certainly be better protected with more sorghum and less irrigated corn. But those environmental concerns don’t add points for the bookkeepers at the Risk Management Agency, which oversees the federally subsidized crop insurance program."
“We pay a price for being a tough guy,” Tim Lust, chief executive officer of the National Sorghum Producers in Lubbock, Texas, told Rogers. “It’s an industry, and if you lose too many acres, you lose the capital investment that goes with that.”
Rogers suggests that producers of sorghum, barley lentils and other small grains need a lobbying alliance with those who raise fruits, vegetables, nuts and nursery stock. "Each camp still looks down its nose at the other," he writes. "But with the rise of the organic movement and greater emphasis on locally grown produce, specialty crops are an important political asset in competing for votes in a House with fewer and fewer rural districts." (Read more)
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