New Crop Sorghum Surpasses $5 as U.S. Weekly Sorghum Exports Shatter Records
Sorghum High Demand 041921
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.
"I think on the High Plains, what we're seeing is a bid for acreage," says Wayne Cleveland, executive director to the Texas Sorghum Association. "We have some folks anywhere between $1 to $2 over the futures, which is really kind of unheard of on the Plains. It's buying acres. Talking to our growers kind of the irony of what's going on in the valley, which the bid yesterday in the valley was $1.30 over. But the irony is that's new crop. There's no old crop left, I think last week sales report, we saw that China basically bought ever kernel of grain sorghum that was left out there at 26 million bushels. So all crop is over with in Texas, everybody's clearly focused on the new crop."
“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.”
The 2021 acreage debate is far from over, and last-minute acreage decisions are possible. USDA showed in its March Prospective Plantings report that U.S. farmers intend to plant 6.9 million acres of sorghum in 2021, which is more than 1 million acres above the 2020 total.
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