New Crop Sorghum Surpasses $5 As U.S. Weekly Sorghum Exports Shatter Records

As U.S. farmers finalize 2021 planting plans, sorghum is still vying for acres. U.S. sorghum growers are enjoying not only a strong basis, but new crop prices above $5 as the hunger for U.S. sorghum hasn’t waned. 

Just this week, USDA confirmed U.S. sorghum shattered records last week, with a total of 33.9 million bushels of purchases. Driven by the top buyer of China, the total smashed the previous record set in August 2020 by 10 million bushels.

“U.S. sorghum exports continue to signal very strong demand for our crop, and new purchases at this level only reaffirm that,” says Tim Lust, CEO of the National Sorghum Producers (NSP). “The size of shipments reported this last week is equivalent to the size of approximately 10 to 12 Panamax vessels.”

NSP says China’s buying hasn’t just been on old crop, but strong new crop sales are a new turn of events for sorghum producers. NSP says new crop purchases of U.S. sorghum for this point in the marketing year are also at a record level, reaching 40 million bushels this past week. That’s a 264% increase from the previous record set in 2014.

“This is the strongest new crop demand we have ever seen at this time in the season,” says Lust. “Availability is so scarce that the sorghum crop being planted now is being marketed at the same time, and farmers have not even started planting in Kansas yet. This sends a strong demand signal to U.S. sorghum producers from our international customers, and we look forward to getting the 2021 crop in the ground.”