Nebraska Sorghum Official Discusses the Crop’s Economic Impact

Jun 16, 2025

By Dale Johnson

The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s 2025 Impact Forum was held this week in Washington D.C., giving Nebraska sorghum producers an opportunity to talk about global markets, food security and global investments that directly impact Nebraska's agricultural economy. Nate Blum, CEO of the Sorghum United Foundation, was the leading voice for Nebraska sorghum producers. Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson caught up with him after the forum.

Nate Blum: With these conversations for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, it was less about the tariff policies, and it was more about the importance of projecting soft power through foreign aid programs and diplomacy. So two different conversations there. Nebraska is the fifth largest producer of sorghum in the U.S. But the important thing to remember is that those markets are typically artificially held down anyway, because China buys 93% of U.S. sorghum, so they typically are able to dictate that price.

Dale Johnson: You've used a term that I'm not familiar with, soft power. What does that mean?

Blum: Well, Soft power is actually probably more important than our hard power. The thing with soft power is that we think about diplomacy, we think about food aid, we think about economic development. These are tools which allow us, as Americans and as a country, or any country really, to project their influence through assistance, aid and prosperous development. And this creates friends, in addition to not just, not just projects, not just helping people, but it allows us to extend our influence within a region without having to resort to military force. And quite frankly, it does so in a way that it lifts up that region so that they can then project those same values that we've shown them.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators