Nigeria’s agricultural production of sorghum has leaped to the second place, now trailing only the United States in annual production.
Data obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts world sorghum production at 59.34 million metric tonnes for 2017/2018.
Of this number, USA’s output is projected to reach 8.4m metric tonnes while Nigeria is second with 6.4m metric tonnes, and Mexico comes in the third position with 6.0m metric tonnes.
Stakeholders in the sorghum sector are finding it challenging to remain in business as low import tariff on cheap barley malt, malt extract, glucose and maltose syrups is pushing the industry to near collapse.
The operators in the sector are seeking government’s intervention to halt the slide by re-imposing a ban on barley malt imports, or at worst, raising the tariff which would help slow the wave of imports and prevent the local industry from total collapse.
European barley prices are on the rise as wet and cold weather in May and June has led to a drop in quantity and quality harvested, according to analyst at Bernstein Research.
While Forward prices for the North American winter grain, which are normally harvested between late July and September, have been falling marginally over the past few years, bad weather in western Europe, which harvests the crop a bit earlier than the US, has seen less crop harvested with poorer quality leading to estimated higher prices.
