Growing Ancestral Grains and Abolitionist Sugars in the Hudson Valley

Commodities

• Agronomic: sorghum (milo), sorghum (sweet)
• Miscellaneous: syrup

Practices

• Crop Production: cropping systems, crop rotation
• Education and Training: demonstration, on-farm/ranch research, study circle
• Sustainable Communities: community development, food access and security, food sovereignty, local and regional food systems, new business opportunities, urban/rural integration

Since 2020, we have been cultivating sorghum as a regenerative and culturally significant African ancestral crop. Sorghum is renowned for its ability to sequester carbon and serve as a valuable cover crop, contributing to soil health and sustainability. Our project aims to make nutrient-dense, culturally relevant sorghum products accessible to working-class communities in New York, while creating opportunities for local producers to enhance soil health and eventually contribute to a regional sorghum processing and marketing cooperative.

In 2025, we will trial five distinct sorghum varieties, measuring and analyzing yield outcomes, saving seeds, and processing value-added products such as whole grain, flour, and syrup. Working with a cooperative distributor and retailer, we will market and sell these products, ensuring equitable access to nutritious foods within our target communities. Through this project, our goal is to establish best practices for growing and harvesting sorghum on small and medium scales, providing the necessary tools and knowledge to help create a network of local sorghum growers.

This SARE Farmer Grant project builds on five years of hands-on experience growing, harvesting, and marketing sorghum. We are well-connected with established and emerging farms, young and beginning farmers, food justice organizations, and cooperative businesses across the Hudson Valley and NYC. Our outreach strategy will leverage our existing programmatic work-farm visits, workdays, coalitions, and strategic events-along with presentations at regional food and farm conferences. Additionally, we will circulate a written report to share our findings and best practices with a broader audience.

The objectives of this project are designed to expand the cultivation and processing of sorghum in New York State, focusing on both syrup and grain production for human consumption. Specifically, we aim to:

1. Grow sorghum at scale for both syrup and grain production: We will cultivate sorghum on our farm for the dual purposes of syrup and grain, including flour production, addressing the gap in the region where sorghum is primarily grown for syrup but not for grain.
2. Assess irrigation's impact on sap production: We will compare irrigated versus unirrigated plots of sorghum to determine how irrigation influences sap yield, providing valuable data on the feasibility and economics of irrigation in sorghum cultivation.
3. Provide culturally relevant crops to farmers and consumers: As the only farm in the region scaling up sorghum cultivation, we will make this heritage crop more accessible to farmers and communities by sharing seeds, transplants, knowledge, and equipment sharing, contributing to the availability of nutritious, culturally significant foods.
4. Transfer knowledge on growing and processing sorghum to farmers: We will develop educational materials and hands-on training to teach farmers in the region how to grow and process sorghum for both syrup and grain production, building capacity for a sustainable sorghum network within the farming community.

By meeting these objectives, this project will provide important information on sorghum cultivation techniques, such as irrigation strategies, and offer practical guidance for farmers interested in diversifying into sorghum production. It will also contribute to the creation of a more resilient, sustainable, and culturally relevant food system in the Northeast.