Sweet sorghum is any of the many varieties of sorghum, a cane-like plant with a high sugar content. Sweet sorghum will thrive under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops and is grown primarily for forage, silage, and sugar production.
African slaves introduced the crop, which then was known as "Guinea corn," into the United States in the early part of the 17th century. Sweet sorghum has been widely cultivated in the U.S. since the 1850s for use in sweeteners, primarily in the form of molasses. By the early 1900's, the US produced 20 million gallons of sweet sorghum syrup annually. Making molasses from sweet sorghum production (as from sugar cane) is heavily labor intensive. Following World War II, with the declining availability of farm labor, sweet sorghum syrup production fell drastically. Currently, less than 1 million gallons are produced annually in the US. Most sweet sorghum grown for molasses production is grown in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
In the U.S. since the 1950s, sweet sorghum has been raised primarily for forage and silage, with sorghum cultivation for cattle feed concentrated in the Great Plains (Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska are the leading producers), where insufficient rainfall and high temperature make corn production unprofitable.
See also
Sorghum festivals in the US
