Varieties of sorghum in Kansas

Kansas is third among the states in the production of sorghum, being surpassed by Texas and Oklahoma. Sorghum is t h e third most valuable crop in Kansas, with an annual valuation from 1915 to 1930 of $38,486,732. Sorghum also ranks third in acreage among Kansas crops, being exceeded by wheat and corn. (Fig. 1.) Sorghum holds first place in the state in tonnage of feed in the form of hay, silage, and fodder. Since sorghum is adapted to most of the 24 million acres of land under cultivation in Kansas, the potential number of tons of forage or bushels of grain which could be produced annually is very great. Sorghum is the sixth most important cereal in the United States and ranks seventh among cultivated crops, The sweet sorghum can be grown in most of the states but is not adapted in the colder New England states and those in the Northwest which include the higher altitudes of the western mountains. Grain sorghum is most extensively grown in the southwest in a n area about 4 0 0 miles wide and 1 , 0 0 0 miles long. This area extends like a great oval reaching southwestward from southern Nebraska, including parts of eastern Colorado and New Mexico, across Kansas, touching southwestern Missouri, and including Oklahoma and the Panhandle of Texas. (Fig. 2 . ) Outside the limits of this oval, except for restricted areas in California and in certain irrigated regions of Arizona, sorghum is mostly grown for forage, silage, or sirup. In the north central states many farmers grow a few acres of sorghum as a catch crop for hay on small areas of land....