The US Department of Agriculture cut its forecast for the 2026 sorghum crop by almost a third to 296mn bushels on 12 August, on a survey of growers that closed ten days before the hottest week of the High Plains summer is forecast to reach the crop at flowering.

Yield is forecast at 55.4 bushels an acre against 72.6 last year, and harvested area at 5.36m acres, down 11 per cent, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Kansas, which accounts for 167.5mn bushels of the national total, is forecast at 67 bushels an acre against 90 last year.

NASS interviewed about 14,500 producers between 25 July and 5 August for expected yields as of 1 August. Daily maximum temperatures at seven of Cropli's eight monitoring points in the sorghum belt ran 2.6C to 4.2C above the 1991-2020 normal over those twelve days, on ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli. In the nine days after interviewing closed they ran 3.7C to 6.8C above, and the week from 15 August is forecast at 4.6C to 7.8C above, with 12 to 14 days above 35C at every one of those points.

A field of grain sorghum in head, seed panicles standing above the leaf canopy under a clear sky

USDA publishes a reliability statistic with each forecast. The root mean square error on its August sorghum production forecast over the past 20 years is 15.0 per cent, against 3.5 per cent for corn, and the 90 per cent confidence interval is 26 per cent. "The August 1 production forecast will not be revised," the report says; a new forecast is made each month instead, and the next comes in September.

[explore layer="belt-map" originId="sorghum-united-states" variable="temperature_2m_max" from="2026-07-01" to="2026-08-14" points="usa-sorghum-north-platte,usa-sorghum-hays,usa-sorghum-garden-city,usa-sorghum-dodge-city,usa-sorghum-guymon,usa-sorghum-amarillo,usa-sorghum-dimmitt,usa-sorghum-lubbock" size="auto" snapshot="es_d87d34d32309f96f" title="Heat across the High Plains sorghum belt as the crop flowers" subtitle="Daily maximum temperature against the 1991-2020 normal at Cropli's eight monitoring points, 1 July to 14 August"]

Sorghum is most exposed in the fortnight it flowers. "The most sensitive time for heat stress to occur is from head emergence through flowering. This period lasts approximately 15 days," Brent Bean, director of agronomy at the United Sorghum Checkoff Program, writes in the body's agronomy guidance. Kansas was 48 per cent headed on 9 August, behind a five-year average of 55 per cent, so more than half the state's crop reaches that stage inside the forecast heat.

The daytime half of the damage threshold is being met and the night half is not. A Kansas State University growth-chamber study cited in the same guidance halved grain set when plants saw maximum temperatures of 97F and minimum night temperatures of 79F for five consecutive days inside the flowering window. Belt maxima have cleared 97F on 11 to 24 days of August at the seven points, counting the forecast, but night minima are averaging 21C to 24C. No point records more than three days meeting both conditions.

USDA rated 35 per cent of the crop good or excellent on 9 August, before the heat, against 66 per cent a year earlier. Twenty-nine per cent was very poor to poor by 2 August, "up from 13 percent just 5 weeks earlier, on June 28", the Crop Production report said. Colorado, where forecast yield has fallen to 31 bushels an acre from 52, was 57 per cent poor or worse.

[chart slug="us-sorghum-high-plains-heat-condition-by-state"]

US sorghum production fell 58 per cent to 4.77mn tonnes in 2022, on heat and drought in the same belt, according to FAO data accessed via Cropli. This year's forecast is about 7.5mn tonnes.

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The short crop is arriving into the strongest Chinese demand in three years. China took 3.38mn tonnes of US sorghum in the first six months of 2026, 87 per cent of everything the US shipped. This was against 369,000 tonnes and an 18 per cent share in the whole of 2025, according to US Census Bureau data accessed via Cropli. Shipments were zero for eight consecutive months from April last year.

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Beijing had put an additional 10 per cent duty on US sorghum from 10 March 2025 under the State Council Tariff Commission's Announcement No. 2, and removed it under Announcement No. 9 with effect from 10 November of last year. "This policy shift led to a resumption of U.S. sorghum purchases by China," the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service said in its March annual report on Chinese grain and feed. The service forecasts Chinese sorghum imports at 7.8mn tonnes in 2026/27, and notes that "domestic production covered only around 30 percent of sorghum demand last year".

Country elevators in northwest Kansas bid $3.83 a bushel for US #2 sorghum on 13 August against $2.90 a year earlier, according to USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. Kansas bids were 23 to 32 per cent above last year across the state's five country-elevator regions, and Texas Panhandle bids for US #1 sorghum 15 to 29 per cent above.

Corn at the same Kansas locations rose 15 to 17 per cent, narrowing sorghum's discount to corn in the northwest to 31 cents a bushel from 63 cents. At Hooker, in the Oklahoma Panhandle and 20 miles from the hottest monitoring point, elevators bid $3.88 against $3.10.

[table slug="us-sorghum-high-plains-heat-cash-bids-vs-corn"]

China is emptying the old crop without yet committing to the new one. It took 56,800 of the 64,500 tonnes of US sorghum shipped in the week to 6 August, but net new sales across all buyers were 3,300 tonnes, down 64 per cent on the week, the Foreign Agricultural Service reported. Much of the Chinese increase was 60,000 tonnes switched from unknown destinations, while no sorghum was booked for the 2026/27 marketing year that begins on 1 September. However, one week of sorghum sales is too thin a base to consider it a trend.

CME Group begins trading the first sorghum futures contract on 24 August, priced as sorghum's basis to CBOT corn. USDA's next forecast for the crop is due in September.