Forage sorghum and cattle market go hand in hand

Roma agronomist Lindsay Ward said he advised growers against planting grain sorghum due to falling prices and suggested they take advantage of the strength of the cattle market by planting forage sorghum.

“There is a significant area of forage sorghum in the Maranoa as more and more people look to recover breeder numbers or increase their carrying capacity,” he said.

“With accredited mungbean seed sold out and mungbeans susceptible to so many seed borne diseases, forage is a worthwhile avenue for mixed cropping and grazing operations considering the current cattle market.”

Elders northern region technical services manager Maree Crawford said she was experiencing a lot of interest in sweet forage sorghum.

“Forage sorghum is perfect for the Maranoa area but they’ve got to look at the sweet types to make bridging from summer to winter crops such as oats easier,” she said.

“Other varieties get hit with frost and turn to cardboard. Sweet varieties like Sugargraze are frost tolerant and maintain the sugar in their stems so the feed doesn’t lose quality through winter.

“From a silage point of view there is a better return on silage than grain sorghum with the price of cattle the way it is.” 

Campbell Brownlie, Moira Runda, Condamine, also has property at Augathella and said forage sorghum had always been a management tool for his mixed cropping and grazing operation.

“We’ve got about 100 hectares of forage here and we’ll put 250 steers on it very soon,” he said.

“These young cattle are still growing so we grow them out on forage and then shift them onto oats.

“We planted forage at Augathella around Christmas 2014 and had rolling fat breeders and good feed right through until October 2015 while our neighbours had nothing.”

With big opportunities for regrowth of Sugargraze forage sorghum and its high sugar content linking to increased palatability, forage sorghum could be the big win-win scenario for mixed agricultural production in 2016.