Quick follow up to this item from last month. To recap, I guesstimated the number of grain teff farmers in the US at under 100, the number of grain proso farmers as being in the low 1000s, and (altho I didn't put down the number) grain sorghum farmers as being over 10,000. That would set up an order of magnitude relationship among numbers of producers of teff, proso, and sorghum like this: x, 10x, and 100x. I checked off-list with some experts and it appears that my guesstimates might be a bit high. Nate Blum of NGSB, for instance, thought that 8-10,000 would be a reasonable estimate for grain sorghum producers (with the caveat that that is his best guess). Still it seems that the order of magnitude relationship among all three would hold. I'm surprised, however, that we don’t have a more solid set of numbers of growers, even as we have good data on acreage & harvests. The main reason for this line of inquiry is to better understand one of the main groups of "constituents" in promoting growing and consuming of the range of millets. It's a much clearer picture if we know more about the primary producers. An original thought was whether the numbers might be manageable enough for there to be direct contact for certain research, feedback, or publicity efforts, but that specific idea may not have been realistic. Returning for a moment to the mathematical relationships among numbers of producers, but expanding it to cover all cereal grains (and pseudo-cereals) - and again staying within the context of US agriculture - might the numbers of producers of these different crops array in something like a Fibonacci sequence?/1 (Or perhaps the number of acres or hectares devoted to the various cereal & pseudo-cereal crops?) I don't have the mathematics or the data to answer that question, but would be most interested to know if anyone has explored this kind of idea./2 If so, would introducing new grains (e.g., millets) represent a "disruption" and potential re-ordering of the existing sequence, rather than just adding numbers of the new one(s) and reducing numbers of existing crops to make room? (Assumption here of relatively constant numbers of producers or of land area devoted to grains.) The main reason for this digression is the thought that we are looking at systems, and understanding the patterns these systems exhibit would be useful in planning and in anticipating the effects of changes. Promoting millets will result in changes - good ones on balance, but ones we should try to understand in advance, as much as possible. DO, EL, MI, US Notes: 1. Fibonacci is a mathematical relationship observed in populations and patterns of natural structures. A good intro can be read at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence 2. The only connection I've seen between Fibonacci and farming is this piece on using those rations for planning choice of crops on a single farm or market garden level: https://www.commercial-hydroponic-farming.com/optimizing-income-farm-using-f... ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, August 7th, 2022 at 2:25 AM, Don Osborn via Collab <collab@lists.millets2023.space> wrote:
I'm curious to know more about the numbers of producers growing grain millets (broadly defined) in North America, with focus here on the US. That would mean proso millet, teff, and sorghum. I'll begin with teff.
A while back, I came across mention of there being 11 growers of teff for grain in the US state of Nevada. On this email list, we heard about two growers of grain teff in Oklahoma. There is one in the state if Michigan that I know of. And an article earlier this year/1 said that the Boise, Idaho-based Teff Co. typically worked with 15-20 producers, and was planning to double that number.
So, it seems that the overall number of grain teff producers in the US is rather small: "Relatively few U.S. producers grow teff, with almost all production in Nevada or Idaho..."/2 Maybe the total number is less than 100?
With numbers on this order of magnitude, it would be feasible to manage direct communication for sharing of information (surveys, publicity...).
What about the number of grain proso millet producers? I found no figures, but looking at 2019 stats from Colorado - the biggest proso-producing state - we can do some math. If the average farm size there is just over 800 acres,/3 and the total number of acres of proso that year was 320,000 (a banner year),/4 that would mean that 400 average-sized farms devoted entirely to proso could account for the total proso production.
However, it seems more likely that producers would devote only part of their land to one such crop. So, for example, 1600 producers in Colorado devoting 200 acres each to proso, could account for the total. So, maybe one could count an average of 1500-2000 producers of proso in that state? (Which would be around 5% of the 38,700 farms and ranches there).
So the number of grain proso producers nationally would be in the low thousands? This is a significant number, even if a small percentage of total farmers in the country.
The number of sorghum farmers is likely higher.
Whatever the actual numbers of producers of grain millets - and any more accurate figures or estimates are welcome - it is useful, I think, to have a clearer picture of the population of farmers in this sector as we plan for the International Year of Millets.
DO, EL, MI, US
Notes: 1. "Company plans to add teff growers, acreage," by Brad Carlson, The Capital Press, 15 Feb. 2022 https://www.capitalpress.com/ag_sectors/grains/company-plans-to-add-teff-gro...
2. "It’s A Teff Little Grain," by Chris Bennett, The Daily Scoop, 1 Nov. 2018 https://www.thedailyscoop.com/news/retail-business/its-teff-little-grain
3. "Ag stats: 2019 farms and land in farms for the USDA mountain states region," Kiowa County Press, (n.d.) https://kiowacountypress.net/content/ag-stats-2019-farms-and-land-farms-usda...
4. "Ag stats: 2019 annual Colorado and U.S. crop summary," Kiowa County Press, (n.d.) https://kiowacountypress.net/content/ag-stats-2019-annual-colorado-and-us-cr...