Sorghum x corn
Major difficulties that affect the sorghum supply chain at the moment include low domestic and foreign demand for the cereal. According
to economist Leandro Menegon Corder, the market of corn is much bigger around the world, because there is know-how and mutual con-
fidence between exporters and importers, and the crop is more popular in the domestic market. The fact is, sorghum exports are little rele-
vant. In 2015, the shipments, basically destined for South Africa, amounted to 27.49 thousand tons, and totaled US$ 4.2 million.
Another topic, in the opinion of the Conab market analyst, is that research work on sorghum is very slow, compared to corn.
Due to this, the kernel lags behind corn in terms of productivity. Another difficulty consists in the limited use of the cereal, once
it is almost entirely used as an ingredient for animal feed, in Brazil. Corn, on the contrary, is vastly used. “In other countries, sor-
ghum is also used as food for humans, but this is an idea that has only recently surfaced in Brazil”, he clarifies.
Inor Ag. Assmann
89
The production of sorghum
should amount to 610
thousand tons in the
2015/16 growing season
