By Jessica Domel
Whether you’re shipping a package to grandma, enjoying a gluten-free cereal or simply feeding the chickens, you’re using one of the world’s most versatile crops–sorghum.
Sometimes called maize or milo, grain sorghum is planted across the globe because it adapts so easily to almost any environment.
We use it for all kinds of things, too.
It’s used to create biodegradable packing peanuts at a plant in Pampa, Texas.
It’s used to feed cows, chickens, pigs and even people. In fact, sorghum is the grain used in special gluten-free foods for those with Celiac disease.
You can also make popcorn balls, cookies, cakes, breads and more out of sorghum.
The Sorghum Checkoff has a whole section of its website dedicated to ways you can prepare the versatile grain.
Dale Artho, a grain sorghum farmer in Wilderado, tells me some people also use sorghum to create a spray insulation that really helps to keep homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
In Japan, where a good deal of U.S. grown sorghum is bought, they use sorghum to feed ducks. It’s also used to create a drink called baijiu.
It’s great for most farmers, too. It’s drought-tolerant, can grow in just 90 days and is cheaper to grow for some.
A pest called the sugarcane aphid that sucks the sugar out of the plant has been a nuisance across Texas for the past year or so, but farmers are working to keep their crops alive.
So the next time you’re driving through the countryside and see a colorful field of sorghum, think about all the fun ways those seeds are used to improve our landscape and our lives.
Hey Jessica,
In 77 years, I have never heard or seen sorghum referred to as maize! As you know maize is called corn here in the US of A. Sorghum ain’t corn!
Before I came to work for Farm Bureau, I actually heard more people call it maize than sorghum. I guess it was the area I grew up in.
My dad used to haul maize in South Texas. I loved those trips with him, because my brother and I always got to play in the bin. We’d come home with it in every fold of our clothes, much to my mother’s dismay. I’m quite certain she never managed to get it out of the lovely shag carpeting in our house at the time.
How fun! I love memories like that. Thank you for sharing!
Texas farmers have been calling grain sorghum, “milo” or “maize” since long before Jessica was born. She’s right. It’s a regional/cultural thing.
[…] in the Spotlight: Bountiful milo crop for Ness County – Kansas Agland Celebrating Sorghum – Texas Table Top 3 Takeaways From Sorghum Day – Agriculture.com Boyce Thompson Institute […]