For IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 4, 2026
*North American Millets Alliance*
*Not Enough Fertilizer this Year? Consider Millets*
If fertilizer is scarce or unavailable for corn, what are planting options?
Have you considered any of the millets?
Replacing corn with soybeans is the most logical choice, but buildup of
cyst nematodes prohibits replanting soybeans on last year’s soybean ground.
Land prices and cropland rent are too high to leave ground idle. Just as
costly is fallow syndrome if the ground is kept bare. Cover crops are a
better option than black fallow. It may be best to plant a species of
millet for grain or forage.
Millets need fertilizer like any other crop. However, they are excellent
nutrient scavengers, so application rates are only a fraction of that
needed for corn. A general recommendation is that fifty pounds of nitrogen
is removed per ton of forage. *
*Pearl millet*, a tall, high-protein leafy grass, can break the nematode
cycle. Economically planted at two to ten pound per acre in rows or drilled
in narrow rows, pearl millet can be cut multiple times for forage, grazed
through first frost without fears of prussic acid, or could be left as a
cover crop over the winter.
Corn Belt farmers should consider *Japanese millet* or *Chiwapa millet*, a
variety of the closely related billion-dollar grass, for grain or forage.
Chiwapa can take wet ground better than Japanese, although both are better
in this regard than most other millets. Unlike pearl millet, which regrows
after cutting, Japanese and Chiwapa should only be cut once. These crops
could be harvested as a food grain, but finding processors may be a
challenge, and the potential specialty market for the grains (typically
under the name, barnyard millet) is limited.
*Teff* is an extremely small-seeded millet that can be harvested for grain,
or used as an excellent, leafy forage crop. The U.S. market for teff as a
food grain is increasing, but buyers are limited – much of teff grain
production is grown under contract. At over a million seeds per pound, if
harvesting teff for grain, best have holes plugged on your grain truck.
Don’t want a four-to-five-foot forage crop like pearl millet? The
shorter *brown
top millet* and *foxtail millet* are excellent for wildlife, as cover
crops, and make nutritious forage. Grains from either of these millets can
be used as a food grain or potentially exported, but commercial-scale U.S.
food processing is not available.
The best grain millet currently in North America, and the poorest forage
millet, is *proso millet*. About a half-million acres of proso grain are
harvested every year in the U.S. Food uses for proso grain in the U.S. and
Canada, as well as exports, continue to expand, although most proso is
currently used as wild bird food. Proso has a slightly higher feed value
than corn in poultry rations, and it can be ground for cattle and hog feeds.
All millets can be used to produce ethanol, but proso is comparable to corn.
Fertilizer recommendations for proso grain are based on University of
Nebraska soil test zero-to-eight-inch depth for all nutrients except
nitrogen where a subsoil sample from 30 to 36 inches is recommended.
*Fertilizer Recommendation for Proso Millet Grain***
[ FOR TABLE - SEE ATTACHED FULL PRESS RELEASE ]
*Soil Fertility Management for Forage Crops: Maintenance, Nitrogen
Management for Grasses, Penn State Extension, August 19, 2025.
**Fertilizing Proso Millet (NebGuide G1945), University of Nebraska, May
2009.
