Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I: Grains

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Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I, Grains

Chinese researchers are using tall sorghums for making plywood. The process apparently works well and gives a product stronger than wood.¹⁴

Dyes

Moroccan leather is said to get its color from red dye extracted from special sorghums. These red-seeded varieties were raised in sub-Saharan Africa and in the old days were sent across the Sahara to Fez or elsewhere by caravan. Natural dyes (especially red ones) are increasingly in demand these days, so perhaps these types could be commercially produced once more (see box, next page).

Resins

There is a black-grain sorghum from Africa called ''shawya" that shows promise in producing industrial resins.¹⁵

ANIMAL FEED

The United States probably leads the world in developing sorghum as a feedstuff. The plant is now a vital animal feed throughout the nation's warmer regions (see page 160).

Although it has been in the United States since the earliest days (see page 186), grain sorghum first became a major American crop in the 1930s, when dwarf cultivars were bred. These lent themselves to large-scale operations and combine harvesting, and the acreage began increasing. The grains were used exclusively for feeding livestock and became so valuable for this purpose that by shortly after World War II, sorghum had become the most important cash crop in Texas and was a valuable resource in several other states as well.

Then in the late 1950s male sterility was discovered in sorghum (see page 163). This made hybrids possible. Sorghums that had originated in South Africa, Ethiopia, and the Sudan were bred together to create hybrids, and yields jumped as much as 40 percent. This led, in turn, to vastly more plantings and even more American animals were soon living off sorghum grain.¹⁶

Today, the country produces about 19 million tons of sorghum grain each year, and millions of American cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys

¹⁴	Information from F.R. Miller.
¹⁵	Information from L.W. Rooney.
¹⁶	In 1957, about 15 percent of U.S. sorghum had been the hybrid form; within 2-3 years, the figure exceeded 90 percent.

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