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Sorghum Production in Africa
SORGHUM PRODUCTION IN AFRICA REMAINS RESILIENT
Despite an onslaught by maize, Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) still holds its head above the shoulders as Africa’s most important crop. First domesticated in the EthiopiaSudan region in northeast Africa some 8,000 years ago, the crop has spread far and wide and is today produced in almost every country in the continent, from Egypt in the North to South Africa in the South. On the global scene, Sorghum is not performing badly either. It is the fifth most produced cereal crop after wheat, maize, rice, and barley.
In terms of tonnage, sorghum is Africa's second most important cereal. The continent produces about 20 million tonnes of sorghum per annum, about one-third of the world crop. But let not numbers lie to you, sorghum’s importance in the continent if far ahead that of maize or any other crop for that matter.
Sorghum is uniquely adapted to Africa's climate, being both drought resistant and able to withstand periods of water-logging. This makes the only viable food grain for many of the world's most food insecure people, many of whom live in Africa. Sorghum in Africa is processed into a very wide variety of attractive and nutritious traditional foods, such as semi-leavened bread, couscous, dumplings and fermented and nonfermented porridges. As Africa’s true indigenous cereal, sorghum is also an important part of culture and traditions. It especially comes in handy when ancestral offerings have to be made “You can't communicate with the ancestors with maize because they don't understand what it is and they get confused,” says Mpho Tshukudu, a South African dietician.
After facing marginalization for decades as a poor man’s food, Sorghum is starting to gain its previous flair as Africa’s number one food crop. Although displacing maize may seem like a pipe dream now, it may certainly be a reality in future as climate change and rising demand for indigenous foods incentivize more farmers to plant the once frowned upon crop. The growth in the global sorghum seed market is proof that farmers are increasingly becoming more open to the idea of sorghum farming. According to the business research company, the global sorghum seed market size grew from US$1.85 billion in 2022 to $1.99 billion in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2%. The market size is further expected to grow to $2.46 billion in 2027 at a CAGR of 5.5%.
NIGERIA DISPLACES USA AS THE WORLD’S LARGEST SORGHUM PRODUCER
The global sorghum production for market year 2022/23 is estimated at 58.03 million metric tonnes (MMT), a 3.94 MMT reduction from the 61.97MMT estimated for the 2021/22 market year, according to the World Agricultural Production (WAP) forecast by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The decline could be attributed to a sharp decline in forecasted yield in the United States.
According to the WAP report, sorghum yields in the United States are expected to decline from 4.33 tonnes per hectare(T/ha) in MY2021/22 to 2.58 T/ha in MY2022/23. Total area under sorghum production is expected to slightly decline from 41.44MMT in MY2021/22 to 40.77MMT in MY2022/23 impacting global sorghum production.
With yields almost halving in the United States, Nigeria is expected to overtake the North American country as the world’s largest sorghum producer. According to the WAP report released in March, Nigeria is forecasted to produce about 7 MMT tonnes of sorghum in MY2022/23 from an estimated planted area of 5.7 million hectares. The 2023 forecast is a represents a rise of about 275,000 tonnes compared to estimated production figures from 2022. Sudan takes the number two spot both globally and in Africa at a forested production of about 5MMT for the MY2022/23.
Ethiopia comes in third in Africa and fifth globally at a forecasted production of about 4.5MMT. Other countries comprising Africa’s top list in respective order include Burkina Faso (1.9MMT), Niger (1.9MMT), Mali (1.5MMT), Cameroon (1.2MMT), Chad (950,000MT), South Sudan (750,000MT), Egypt (750MMT), and Tanzania (750,000MT).
SORGHUM PRODUCTION IN TANZANIA: A MODEL FOR EAST AFRICA
In the East Africa region, Tanzania leads the region in terms of production. According to data from the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the USDA, Tanzania is forecasted to produce 750,000MT of sorghum from 700,000 ha of land. Its neighbors Uganda and Kenya are forecast to produce 225,000MT and 200,000 in the 2023MY. Of the founding members of the East African Community, only Tanzania seems to get it right when it comes to sorghum production. The country is forecast to report a 1.1 T/ha yield in MY2023, which is a 0.1T/ha improvement from MY2022/23.
Uganda however reported a decline in yields to 0.9T/ha, a 0.4T/ ha decline from the previous MY estimates. Kenya on the other hand trails its neighbors with a yield of 0.8T/ha in MY2022/23 as well as in the previous year. In the wider Eastern Africa region, Ethiopia leads with a yield of 2.7T/ha. Nevertheless, preliminary regional sorghum
production estimates for Marketing Year (MY) 2022/23 spanning from October 2022 to September 2023 are nine percent below average, according to Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS). Opening stocks in the region are estimated to be 92 percent below average but demand is said to be average, resulting in selfsufficiency and regional balances of 15 and 103 percent below average. The FEWS report further indicates that import requirements in South Sudan and Somalia are expected to be above average. South Sudan will likely draw supplies from Uganda and Sudan while Somalia is expected to turn to Ethiopia to fill the deficit, according to the report.
SORGHUM: AFRICA’S MOST IMPORTANT STAPLE FOOD
Sorghum has been, for centuries, one of the most important staple foods for millions of people in the semiarid tropics of Africa. Despite the popularity of maize, the cereal continues to remain a principal source of energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals for millions across the continent, particularly in the Sahel region and northeastern Africa where it is planted with little to no fertilizer. From semi-leavened bread, couscous, and dumplings, to fermented and non-fermented porridges, African consumers have figured out a way of incorporating sorghum into almost every meal time.
It is the grain of choice for brewing traditional African beers across the continent and is increasingly becoming quite a common raw material for the production of lagers in many breweries across the continent. Diageo-owned East African Breweries uses sorghum in a number of its beers. From Kenya to Tanzania and Uganda, the company has contracted farmers to plant sorghum for use in beer production. Senator Keg is a good example of excellent beers produced from sorghum. In the 1980s, Nigeria imposed a ban on barley malt imports, a move that spurred the use of sorghum in beer production. By 2008, sorghum production had grown to 11 million tonnes annually, making the country the largest producer globally. A reversal in the ban has adversely impacted the industry but sorghum continues to be extensively used in the beer industry as well as a source of food for many in the rural areas.
If not for use in beer, sorghum consumption has largely remained low in Eastern and Southern Africa particularly due to the stigmatization of the crop as a poor mans foods. New products such as instant soft porridge are however starting to emerge with considerable success particularly in the up market where demand for indigenous whole grains are becoming increasingly popular for their perceived superior nutritional value. In South Africa where sorghum consumption has been declining faster than anywhere in the continent, new sorghum-based products such as Maltabella Porridge, King Kong Malted Sorghum, Mabele Cereal, and Morvite Sorghum Flour are starting to appear on the mainstream commercial market, pointing to a future where sorghum might regain its popularity as Africa’s number one staple food.
With rising wheat prices and varying market availability, Sorghum is once again on the radar as mills look for ways to make raw materials sourcing less dependent on the global wheat market. Mühlenchemie, one of the world's leading companies in the field of flour treatment is helping make the transition to sorghum possible.
The company has developed a new series of enzyme-based products that improve baking results with composite flours from grains such as maize, cassava, or sorghum, which are grown and available locally in many parts of the world.
In the African continent especially, the idea of using “composite flour” is gaining momentum, said Liezel Huysamen, senior application technologist, southern Africa, for flour improvement specialist Mühlenchemie. Mühlenchemie has responded to the new technical challenges and developed a raw material concept that deliberately excludes the use of vital gluten to keep the cost of flour treatment as low as possible for the mills.
With Compozym from Mühlenchemie, these crops can replace up to 20% of the wheat without impairing quality. Besides the basic treatments, the toolbox includes “on-top” applications that specifically promote such attributes as a highly succulent crumb, delayed retrogradation, or greater tolerance to long fermentation times. In such cases, Compozym may be combined with products from Alphamalt Fresh or EMCEbest WA ranges. The new Compozym product line was developed based on analyses in rheology and subsequently in the baking laboratory and has been tested and refined with a wide variety of flours and applications. The solutions can be used for tin loaves like sandwich bread, freestanding bread like baguettes and fino, and flatbreads like parotha and chapati.
CHALLENGES ABOUND
From a journal titled, the Assessment of sorghum production constraints and farmer preferences for sorghum variety in Uganda: implications for nutritional quality breeding paper, lack of improved crop varieties (released and disseminated varieties) was ranked as the major constraint across the study areas, which can be extrapolated to other parts of Africa where yields per hectare are low.
Other important constraints reported by farmers with an average mean of above 50 were drought, lack of agricultural extension services, high costs of production input, bird damage, small land holdings, insect pests, limited market access, and pests and diseases. Most farmers cultivated a single variety of sorghum rather than a combination of different varieties. As well as rare usage of fertilizer, not even the available manure. A lack of ready markets also constrains both production and profitability.
To lift the continent and the world from the challenges, Bishop Stuart University has pointed out in an article titled ‘Innovation Opportunities in Sorghum Production in Uganda’ that some of the identified opportunities among others include increasing farm-level production through enacting supportive policy and providing support to research centers like KAZARDI and other NARS in seed production and distribution, the introduction of small-scale sorghum processing, and increasing their capacity as well as that of the existing processing entities.
INNOVATION IN NEW SORGHUM VARIETIES
A number of sorghum varieties have been meticulously engineered to adapt to the current environment and climatic conditions as the world tries to improve its food security. International research organization ICRISAT has, for instance, teamed up with the Pan African Seed Company Seed Co Group to develop a new hybrid of white sorghum (great millet) that is high yielding and promises greater resilience to erratic rainfall. The new invention has a yield potential of up to 8 tonnes per hectare, offering farmers a 25% yield increase over existing varieties. ICRISAT now plans to produce the seed at scale to sell to smallscale farmers from the drylands.
Additionally, Purdue University’s Mitch Tuinstra, professor of plant breeding and genetics and scientific director of the Institute for Plant Sciences in the College of Agriculture, developed a dhurrin-free sorghum technology that is expected to set farmers’ minds at ease. Dhurrin is a cyanogenic glycoside produced in many plants as a chemical defense against herbivores and pathogens via the release of toxic hydrogen cyanide gas.
In January, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a new publicprivate partnership project “Feed the Future Striga Smart Sorghum for Africa (SSSfA)” in Kenya and Ethiopia that utilizes CRISPR genome editing to develop new sorghum varieties resistant to Striga. Striga is a parasitic weed responsible for up to 100 percent yield loss in Africa’s staple cereals, thus posing a great danger to the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers on the continent.
In partnership with corporate and public sector players, Egerton University in Kenya has created high-yielding, disease- and droughtresistant crop varieties including five new sorghum seed varieties designed to yield industrial raw materials in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, bakery products, animal feeds, and ethanol. After a successful National performance trial conducted by KEPHIS lead researcher, Professor Erick Cheruiyot, one of the new sorghum varieties, “EUS 130,” is now being used in the production of value-added sorghum baked food products. Another variety “EU-SHI 1” has been deployed for beer malting, while “EUSS-10” and “EU-SS-11” have also been released to market for ethanol production and animal feed production.
The African Bio-fortified Sorghum (ABS) Project, a consortium of nine institutions led by Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International, is also working to develop new varieties of sorghum that are easier to digest and contain higher levels of vitamins A and E, iron, zinc, and the essential amino acids lysine, threonine, and tryptophan. Breeders at ICRISAT have helped boost the iron and zinc content of sorghum by tinkering with genes to develop the biofortified line that also has higher grain and fodder yields.
In May 2018, ICRISAT biofortified sorghum variety ICSR 14001 was introduced in India pegged as a rainy season variety (Kharif) but it can be grown in post-rainy (Rabi) and summer seasons. The 1.6 to 1.8-meter high “Parbhani Shakti” with clusters of 6000 grains on each panicle, offers a zinc content of 25 to 32 ppm (base level 20 ppm) and iron elevated to 42 to 48 ppm (base level 30 ppm). Its protein content is 11.9 percent, which is higher than 10 percent in most released cultivars. Plus, a low phytate content (4.3 mg/100 g) compared to an average of 7.4 in sorghum, means increased bioavailability of micronutrients.
THE FOOD OF THE FUTURE
Sorghum has been with us for centuries and although it had taken the back seat with the popularity of maize, wheat, and rice, it is springing back as the most reliable food choice as climate change makes the cultivation of these crops unsustainable. Unlike its competitors which were brought to Africa by explorers and colonizers, Sorghum is indigenous to Africa. It is uniquely adapted to this climate and thus stands as the only truly sustainable solution for food security in the continent. To unlock its potential, consumer perception of it being a poor man’s food must end to enable greater incorporation into our daily diets. Further, innovations of newer trendy sorghum-based products like the one slowing coming to market in South Africa should continue to make the commodity attractive to younger consumers in search of new and exciting flavor experiences. Lasting research should continue around high-yielding varieties to enable greater production using limited land. Egypt with a 5T/Ha yield is proof that higher production is possible if the right technologies and resources are channeled toward sorghum production.
