First, the concentration, because it makes most sorghum pricing irrelevant to you

Here is world sorghum import value for 2024, from World Bank WITS under HS 100700. Read the gap between the first and second rows before anything else.

Japan, the second largest buyer in the world, is about one and a half per cent of China’s value. Tridge, citing ITC Trade Map, puts China at roughly 83.8 per cent of world grain sorghum import value in 2024. We will note in passing that Tridge’s own top-ten table omits China entirely while the same page quotes that 83.8 per cent figure, which is an inconsistency inside a single source; we use the WITS figures above and flag the discrepancy rather than quietly choosing whichever number suits us.

Two other rows are worth a glance. The United States sits at rank 28, importing about USD 2.2 million, because it is one of the world’s largest sorghum exporters. India sits at rank 105, importing essentially nothing, because India grows its own. Neither country is a sorghum import market in any meaningful sense, which matters when you are reading demand forecasts written from a US perspective.

What that one buyer is actually buying, and why it just became unstable

China’s sorghum demand is built on two uses: baijiu distilling, where sorghum is the defining grain, and animal feed. Neither buys organic certification. Baijiu is a conventional industrial fermentation; feed compounders buy on energy, protein and price.

That concentration has consequences, and 2025 demonstrated them. Between 2020 and 2024, China took more than 83 per cent of all US sorghum exports, worth between USD 1.32 billion and USD 2.14 billion a year. In 2024 alone China took 4.63 million tonnes of the 5.24 million tonnes the United States shipped, about 88 per cent by volume.

Then, through July 2025, US sorghum exports fell to 82 thousand tonnes against more than 3.24 million tonnes in the same period of 2024. That is an 80 per cent fall overall, with sales to China down 97 per cent, attributed to the tariff dispute. Australia and Argentina have largely taken that Chinese business. A comparable slump in 2018 and 2019 reversed after the 2020 agreement, and a more recent US-China agreement may reopen the market, so this is a swing rather than a permanent shift. Outside China, the rest of the world has absorbed less than 16.4 per cent of US sorghum exports in any year since 2020.

Where India sits, and where Indian jowar actually goes

India is one of the world’s major sorghum producers and barely an importer at all. For export, jowar travels inside India’s millet trade: APEDA, citing DGCIS, reports about 1.21 lakh metric tonnes of millets worth USD 59.23 million in FY25, going to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, the USA, Germany, Libya and Bangladesh among others.

Note the mismatch with the import table above. The markets that dominate world sorghum buying are not the markets that buy Indian jowar, because they are buying a different thing for a different purpose. Indian sorghum moves as a food grain to the Gulf, to diaspora markets and to a small number of food manufacturers. It does not compete with Australian and Argentine feed sorghum into Chinese ports, and we would not pretend otherwise.

You cannot see tannins. This is the most useful page in this guide

Sorghum is the only major cereal where a significant share of the crop carries condensed tannins, and almost every buyer we speak to believes they can screen for them by colour. They cannot.

Condensed tannins come from a pigmented testa layer beneath the pericarp, not from the colour of the grain. Hybrids that carry that testa layer are usually high-tannin and often brown. But some high-tannin hybrids have a thick white pericarp and look white. Meanwhile most red and white hybrids carry no tannin at all. Colour and tannin are correlated, loosely, and correlation is not a specification.

The US Federal Grain Inspection Service handles this by defining its classes on tannin presence as well as pericarp colour:

Note also that grain colour is not considered when sorghum is graded for commercial trade. Grading looks at test weight, damaged kernels, broken kernels, foreign material and non-sorghum seeds. Colour is a class descriptor, not a grade factor.

Why it matters: high-tannin grain binds protein and reduces performance in poultry and swine, though ruminants are much less affected. In food use it affects colour, astringency and protein digestibility. In the United States roughly 98 per cent of the crop is not high-tannin, so colour rarely bites there; in origins where bird-resistant brown types are grown deliberately to protect the crop from bird damage, it bites more often.

And here is the part that applies to us. Indian jowar is traded by colour description. “White jowar” is a trade term, not a tannin guarantee. If tannin content matters to your process, do not accept a colour word from us or from anyone else. Specify a measured tannin result on the shipped lot, and state the method. That costs us testing and occasionally costs us a lot that fails, and it is still the right way to buy this grain.

The contaminant limit that names sorghum, and organic does not help

Sorghum is named in Regulation (EU) 2023/915 in the tropane alkaloid entries, alongside millet:

The source is a weed. Thorn apple, Datura stramonium, grows readily in sorghum and millet fields, and its seeds are close enough in size and density to the grain to survive ordinary cleaning and gravity separation. Those seeds carry atropine and scopolamine. The contamination travels with individual seeds rather than spreading evenly through a lot, which makes it a sampling problem as much as a cleaning problem.

Now the part that works against us. Organic certification offers no protection here and arguably leaves you more exposed. Tropane alkaloids do not come from anything a farmer applies; they come from a plant growing between the rows. Organic standards govern inputs, so on this contaminant the organic certificate is silent. Meanwhile the conventional tool against Datura is herbicide, which organic prohibits.

What controls it is weed management through the season, roguing Datura before harvest, and optical sorting afterwards, verified by analysis on the lot that ships. If you buy one analysis on organic sorghum, buy this one, and ask your supplier what they do about Datura rather than whether they hold a certificate.

Prussic acid: a real hazard, attached to the wrong part of the plant

Sorghum contains dhurrin, a cyanogenic glycoside that can release hydrogen cyanide. Prussic acid poisoning is a genuine and well-documented risk, and you will find plenty of alarming material about it online. The useful question is where it actually applies.

It is a forage and grazing hazard: young plants, regrowth, and crops stressed by frost or drought. Published work finds that hydrocyanic acid potential falls as the plant matures and rises with temperature. Mature grain is a different proposition from a stressed young plant in a paddock.

On the regulatory side the position is clean. The EU sets hydrocyanic acid maximum levels for a short, named list: linseed at 250 mg/kg, or 150 mg/kg placed on the market for the final consumer; almonds at 35 mg/kg; apricot kernels at 20 mg/kg; cassava root, fresh and peeled, at 50 mg/kg; and cassava and tapioca flour at 10 mg/kg. No cereal grain appears in that list, and sorghum is not in it.

We set this out because the honest version is more useful than either the scare or the dismissal. If a supplier offers you a cyanide certificate on food-grade sorghum grain as though an importing authority required it, they are selling you a test you were not asked for. If you are buying sorghum as forage or fodder, the hazard is real and you should be discussing crop stage, stress history and cutting management instead.

Ergot: covered for sclerotia, not named for alkaloids

Sorghum has its own ergot, Claviceps africana, which infects the flowering panicle and has spread through most sorghum-growing regions. The EU position is more precise than most suppliers will tell you.

• Ergot sclerotia. Regulation (EU) 2023/915 sets 0.2 g/kg for unprocessed cereal grains as a general category, with unprocessed rye treated separately. Sorghum is not excluded, so this limit reaches it.
• Ergot alkaloids. The alkaloid limits are written for named cereals: milling products of barley, wheat, spelt and oats, rye milling products, wheat gluten, and processed cereal-based food for infants and young children. Sorghum is not named in the alkaloid entries.

So a sclerotia limit applies and a sorghum-specific alkaloid limit does not. We say that rather than the vaguer “ergot is regulated” because the difference decides which test you pay for. Specify sclerotia by weight and by count on the shipped lot, plus visual examination of the sample.

The other mycotoxins, with the right categories

Sorghum is attractive to baby-food formulators because it is gluten-free, and that is exactly where the limits tighten by a factor of five to fifty. If your product is for infants and young children, say so at enquiry stage rather than after shipment.

Gluten-free, and a disclosure about us

Sorghum is naturally gluten-free and is one of the better-performing gluten-free flours, which is most of why it has a Western food market at all. That claim lives or dies on cross-contact, not on the grain.

So, the disclosure. RNG Agro Exports handles wheat as well as sorghum and millets. If you are buying organic sorghum to carry a gluten-free claim, that concerns you, and you should interrogate it rather than take comfort from a certificate. Ask us which lines and silos the lot passed through, what the cleaning and changeover procedure between wheat and sorghum is, whether it is validated, and what the gluten result is on the shipped lot with the method and limit of quantification stated. Ask our competitors the same questions. Every Indian exporter of scale handles wheat; the ones worth buying from can tell you precisely how they keep it apart.

EU border controls: not listed, and here is how we checked

Indian sorghum is not subject to increased official controls. CN code 1007 appears in neither Annex I nor Annex II of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793, for India or for any other country, and no entry in either annex mentions sorghum. Rice under CN 1006 remains the only cereal listed for India.

We state the basis because it matters. We read the India rows of both annexes as amended by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1206, which entered into force on 30 June 2026. We did not infer this from a summary of recent changes. Summaries report what changed, not what is already listed, and reading one as the other is an easy and expensive mistake.

Two caveats. Not being listed means your consignment is not subject to mandatory increased checks as a category. It does not mean it cannot be sampled, and it does not mean the contaminant limits above do not apply; the tropane alkaloid limit in particular applies at all times to all sorghum placed on the EU market. And the annexes are revised roughly twice a year, so confirm the position at your shipment date.

Food, feed or distilling: three different purchases

Most sorghum in world trade goes to feed compounders and distillers rather than to people. The three purchases share the organic paperwork and diverge almost everywhere else.

Food-grade sorghum carries colour, broken-grain and foreign-matter specifications, usually wants a tannin-free type, and is governed by the food contaminant limits above. Feed sorghum is governed by feed legislation with different limits and tolerances, and tannin matters there for a different reason, namely monogastric performance. Distilling buyers care about starch content and fermentability and are generally indifferent to the attributes a food miller cares about.

Say which you are at enquiry stage. A sorghum specification that does not state food, feed or distilling, and does not state a tannin requirement, forces us to guess twice, and the quotation you get back will not be comparable with one from a competitor who guessed differently.

Specification: what to put in the contract

The layers of organic paperwork

Organic is not an analytical zero

Organic certification governs what may be applied. It does not promise that nothing will be detected.

Drift from neighbouring conventional fields, carry-over on shared drying yards, shared cleaning lines and shared transport all produce low-level detections in genuinely organic material. The right question about a positive is not “is this organic” but “at what level, and is that level consistent with carry-over or with application”. Carry-over sits in parts per billion; a parts-per-million result is a traceability question.

Sorghum adds two cases where the logic runs differently. A tropane alkaloid detection says nothing about whether the crop was organic, because the source is a weed rather than an input; a high result on certified organic grain is entirely possible and entirely consistent with the certificate. And tannin content is a genotype question, not a contamination question at all: it tells you which hybrid was grown, not how it was grown.

What to ask for before you buy

1. A measured tannin result on the shipped lot, with the method stated. Not “white”.
2. Atropine and scopolamine on the shipped lot, from an accredited laboratory, with the sampling plan stated.
3. What the supplier does about Datura in the field and at the sorter, answered in specifics rather than with a certificate.
4. Ergot sclerotia by weight and count on the shipped lot, plus visual examination.
5. Aflatoxins and ochratoxin A against the category matching your end use, infant food included if relevant.
6. Gluten on the shipped lot with method and limit of quantification, plus the wheat changeover procedure.
7. The NPOP transaction certificate for the lot, verified with the certifying body directly.
8. For the EU, the TRACES NT Certificate of Inspection with a matching goods description; for the USA, the NOP Import Certificate issued before departure.

Frequently asked questions

Who imports the most sorghum?

China, by a margin that makes the rest of the table almost decorative. World Bank WITS data for 2024 under HS 100700 puts China at about USD 2.59 billion, with Japan second at about USD 40.1 million. Japan, the world’s second largest buyer, is around one and a half percent of China’s value. South Africa follows at USD 33.8 million, Italy at USD 28.2 million, Mexico at USD 26.8 million and Spain at USD 21.2 million. Tridge, citing ITC Trade Map, puts China at roughly 83.8 percent of world grain sorghum import value. What matters commercially is that this single buyer purchases sorghum for baijiu distilling and animal feed, neither of which is an organic market.

Why should I ignore the published sorghum price?

Because it is a Chinese feed and liquor price, and it is currently unstable. China took more than 83 percent of US sorghum exports between 2020 and 2024, worth USD 1.32 to 2.14 billion a year, and in 2024 it took 4.63 million tonnes of the 5.24 million tonnes the US shipped, about 88 percent by volume. Through July 2025, US sorghum exports fell to 82 thousand tonnes against more than 3.24 million tonnes in the same period of 2024, an 80 percent fall overall with sales to China down 97 percent, attributed to the tariff dispute, with Australia and Argentina taking that Chinese business. Organic food-grade sorghum is a different product sold into a different market on specification rather than on a commodity curve. If someone quotes you a sorghum index price for organic food-grade grain, they are quoting the wrong market.

Can I tell whether sorghum has tannins by looking at it?

No, and this is the most useful thing in this guide. Condensed tannins come from a pigmented testa layer beneath the pericarp, not from the colour you can see. Hybrids carrying that testa layer are usually high-tannin and often brown, but some high-tannin hybrids have a thick white pericarp and look white. Most red and white hybrids carry no tannin at all. The US Federal Grain Inspection Service recognises this by defining its classes on tannin presence as well as pericarp colour: Sorghum, Tannin Sorghum, White Sorghum and Mixed Sorghum. So buying white jowar is a colour description, not a tannin specification. If tannins matter to your process, specify a measured tannin result on the shipped lot.

Is prussic acid a problem in sorghum grain?

It is a genuine sorghum hazard in the wrong place, and the distinction matters. Sorghum contains dhurrin, a cyanogenic glycoside that releases hydrogen cyanide, and prussic acid poisoning is a real risk when livestock graze young plants, regrowth, or crops stressed by frost or drought. Published work finds hydrocyanic acid potential falls as the plant matures. It is a forage and grazing problem rather than a mature-grain problem. On the regulatory side, the EU sets hydrocyanic acid maximum levels only for linseed, almonds, apricot kernels, cassava root and cassava and tapioca flour. No cereal grain appears in that list and sorghum is not in it. Be sceptical of anyone who tries to sell you a cyanide test on food-grade sorghum grain as though it were a border requirement.

Is Indian sorghum subject to increased EU border controls?

No. CN code 1007 appears in neither Annex I nor Annex II of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793, for India or for any other country, and no entry in either annex mentions sorghum. Rice under CN 1006 remains the only cereal listed for India. We verified this against the annexes as amended by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1206, which entered into force on 30 June 2026, rather than inferring it from a summary of changes. Summaries report what changed, not what is already listed, and reading one as the other is an easy and expensive mistake. Not being listed means your consignment is not subject to mandatory increased checks as a category. It does not mean it cannot be sampled, and it does not mean contaminant limits do not apply.

• China, by a margin that makes the rest of the table almost decorative. World Bank WITS data for 2024 under HS 100700 puts China at about USD 2.59 billion, with Japan second at about USD 40.1 million. Japan, the world’s second largest buyer, is around one and a half percent of China’s value. South Africa follows at USD 33.8 million, Italy at USD 28.2 million, Mexico at USD 26.8 million and Spain at USD 21.2 million. Tridge, citing ITC Trade Map, puts China at roughly 83.8 percent of world grain sorghum import value. What matters commercially is that this single buyer purchases sorghum for baijiu distilling and animal feed, neither of which is an organic market.
• Because it is a Chinese feed and liquor price, and it is currently unstable. China took more than 83 percent of US sorghum exports between 2020 and 2024, worth USD 1.32 to 2.14 billion a year, and in 2024 it took 4.63 million tonnes of the 5.24 million tonnes the US shipped, about 88 percent by volume. Through July 2025, US sorghum exports fell to 82 thousand tonnes against more than 3.24 million tonnes in the same period of 2024, an 80 percent fall overall with sales to China down 97 percent, attributed to the tariff dispute, with Australia and Argentina taking that Chinese business. Organic food-grade sorghum is a different product sold into a different market on specification rather than on a commodity curve. If someone quotes you a sorghum index price for organic food-grade grain, they are quoting the wrong market.
• No, and this is the most useful thing in this guide. Condensed tannins come from a pigmented testa layer beneath the pericarp, not from the colour you can see. Hybrids carrying that testa layer are usually high-tannin and often brown, but some high-tannin hybrids have a thick white pericarp and look white. Most red and white hybrids carry no tannin at all. The US Federal Grain Inspection Service recognises this by defining its classes on tannin presence as well as pericarp colour: Sorghum, Tannin Sorghum, White Sorghum and Mixed Sorghum. So buying white jowar is a colour description, not a tannin specification. If tannins matter to your process, specify a measured tannin result on the shipped lot.
• It is a genuine sorghum hazard in the wrong place, and the distinction matters. Sorghum contains dhurrin, a cyanogenic glycoside that releases hydrogen cyanide, and prussic acid poisoning is a real risk when livestock graze young plants, regrowth, or crops stressed by frost or drought. Published work finds hydrocyanic acid potential falls as the plant matures. It is a forage and grazing problem rather than a mature-grain problem. On the regulatory side, the EU sets hydrocyanic acid maximum levels only for linseed, almonds, apricot kernels, cassava root and cassava and tapioca flour. No cereal grain appears in that list and sorghum is not in it. Be sceptical of anyone who tries to sell you a cyanide test on food-grade sorghum grain as though it were a border requirement.

The conclusion we want you to draw, and it costs us an easy conversation. When somebody quotes you “the sorghum price”, they are quoting a Chinese feed and liquor price that has just moved by tens of per cent for political reasons. That number tells you almost nothing about organic food-grade sorghum, which is a small, specification-driven trade sold on tannin status, contaminant results and documentation rather than on a commodity curve. If you benchmark our quotation against a sorghum index, you will conclude we are expensive, and you will be comparing two different products. Ask us instead what the specification costs and why.