If Sourghum Uses Less Water Than Corn, Why Don't We Eat Them?

Sorghum handles drought better than corn, has been feeding people for 5,000 years, and the US grows huge amounts of it. So why has almost nobody in North America knowingly eaten it? The answer has to do with hybrid seeds, hungry birds, a strange protein that gets harder to digest when you cook it, and a whole lot of cattle. In this video we look at why sorghum became a livestock feed and export crop in the US while corn ended up in nearly everything we eat. We cover the earliest evidence of sorghum farming in ancient Sudan, the 1950s Texas breakthrough that finally made hybrid sorghum possible, the Tannin1 gene that keeps birds away, and why most American sorghum gets shipped to China. As groundwater on the Great Plains runs low, this drought-tolerant grain might finally be getting its moment. Timestamps: 0:00 Why don’t we eat sorghum? 1:20 Does sorghum really use less water than corn? 2:17 Where sorghum came from 3:09 Corn’s head start and the hybrid seed problem 4:55 Birds, tannins and bitter grain 5:55 The protein that gets worse when you cook it 8:17 Will sorghum make a comeback? References: Rees, J. & Irmak, S. (2012). Crop Water Use Comparison of Rainfed Corn, Sorghum, and Soybean from 2009 to 2011. University of Nebraska–Lincoln CropWatch. https://cropwatch.unl.edu/crop-water-... Winchell, F., Stevens, C. J., Murphy, C., Champion, L., & Fuller, D. Q. (2017). Evidence for Sorghum Domestication in Fourth Millennium BC Eastern Sudan. Current Anthropology, 58(5). https://www.sci.news/archaeology/earl... Rooney, W. L. & Smith, C. W. History of Sorghum Improvement (covers Stephens & Holland and cytoplasmic male sterility). ICRISAT. https://oar.icrisat.org/10853/1/Histo... Xie, P. et al. (2019). Saturated Tannin1 regulation of bird-feeding behavior in sorghum. Nature Genetics. Summary: https://www.smartfood.org/project/res... Mertz, E. T. et al. (1984). Pepsin digestibility of proteins in sorghum and other major cereals. PNAS, 81(1), 1–2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas... Wong, J. H. et al. (2009). Digestibility of protein and starch from sorghum. USDA ARS. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles... Sorghum Starch and Protein Digestibility: Mechanisms, Modifications, and Health Implications. Foods (MDPI). https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/15/10/... U.S. sorghum boom silenced by Chinese cutback. The FERN’s Ag Insider. https://thefern.org/ag_insider/u-s-so...