Growers in the Texas South Plains, Colorado and central Kansas face a drought-hit 2026 sorghum crop, while South Texas battles excess rain — a split that National Sorghum Producers CEO Tim Lust calls "a tale of two worlds — the haves and the have nots."

Harvested acres and yields across the Sorghum Belt will fall this year, Lust told Farm Press, though he still expects "a decent crop." The weather damage comes at a moment when demand signals for the grain are strengthening across three markets: forage, human food and ethanol.

Those opposing forces framed the Global Sorghum Conference, which brought producers, scientists and industry stakeholders from 20 countries to Lubbock, Texas — a city with deep roots in sorghum genetics. "When we look at not only hybrids grown around the United States but around the world, a lot of the original base of that actually traces back to Texas," said Lust, who also leads the United Sorghum Checkoff Program.

David Jordan, chair of the Global Sorghum Association and one of the world's leading sorghum breeders, based in Queensland, Australia, called Lubbock the "powerhouse of sorghum research," noting that many developments used in Australia, including drought tolerance, originated there.

Speed of genetic gain topped the research agenda. "We want to make it happen faster for the growers we serve," Jordan said. Money is the constraint. "Sorghum is a crop that hasn't always had the research investment that, say, corn or soybeans have," Lust said. "So it's good to see the investment of dollars coming today with some of the new technologies and gene editing and items like that. It just allows us to go a lot faster, be a part of discussions that a crop like ours never could be a part of."

Shared challenges, divergent stakes

The problems facing sorghum growers are universal: water scarcity, weather variability, the need to raise crop value and cut farmer risk. The stakes differ sharply by geography. "In the case of smallholder farmers in Africa, it might mean the difference between sending a child to school or not, and it makes a big difference to commercial farmers in Australia or in the U.S.," Jordan said.

Sorghum's built-in heat tolerance helps, but this summer tested its limits. After a record run of consecutive triple-digit days with no rain, Lust conceded even sorghum has a ceiling. "You can get heat that's too much for sorghum, too much for cotton, it's too much for people, for anything," he said.

Forage demand 'exploding'

Forage sorghum is the fastest-growing outlet. Silage demand from dairies and feedyards is "exploding," Lust said, driven not just in the Texas Panhandle but across the United States and globally. In water-limited regions, forage sorghum needs a shorter growing season than other summer crops and therefore fewer irrigation passes. "There's a lot of times we're one rain short of having a good grain crop, but we can make forage," Lust noted.

Dairy producers want genetics to catch up. Brad Bouma of Legacy Farms, who hosted a conference tour at his Plainview, Texas, dairy, called for herbicide tolerance and better digestibility in the silage he grows and feeds. "Being able to tweak the genetic makeup to have a couple of herbicides to actually kill grass at lay-by and later in the process, will be a huge thing," he told the scientists. "It's a long-term goal, but from the breeders I've talked to, it doesn't take a lot of traits or maneuvering to get to where we can kill grasses pretty quickly." Raising fiber digestibility is harder, he acknowledged, but "it's doable with some genetic modifications."

Food and fuel pull

Human food demand is also climbing, especially in toddler and infant products. Gerber and General Mills are converting whole product lineups to sorghum-based foods, Lust said, driven by the grain's low metals content and high protein. Jessica Christiansen, communication head at Bayer Crop Science and a keynote speaker, highlighted sorghum's mineral and micronutrient value and its fit in US gluten-free niches. "How do we get the word out and make it more accessible, whether you're living in Nigeria or you're living in Lubbock?" she asked.

Ethanol remains the volume anchor. Producers use up to 120 million bushels of sorghum annually for high-octane fuel, according to the United Sorghum Checkoff. John Duff, CEO of Serō Ag Strategies and a keynote speaker, said octane value alone guarantees the market, regardless of environmental benefits. "Ethanol's octane value guarantees a 17 billion-gallon-per-year market," Duff said. "Your job as scientists is to prove that sorghum deserves the premium prices within that market by demonstrating 30% to 80% lower N2O emissions. This isn't about survival; it's about winning."

For growers, the near-term watchpoints are clear: harvest results from the split 2026 crop, progress on herbicide-tolerance and digestibility traits from breeders, and whether researchers deliver the N2O emissions modeling that could unlock ethanol premiums for sorghum.