Paul Hay
Extension Educator in Gage County
Crop Watch News Service
University of Nebraska Lincoln

This year nationwide another 800,000 acres of milo will be lost to soybeans and corn. In Nebraska grain sorghum is grown from Steinauer to Ragan across southern Nebraska. It is well placed in one of the state’s toughest growing areas for dryland crops. Southern Nebraska often has temperature and moisture variability that challenge crops and producers alike.

Milo is still a good crop choice for farmers who treat it like a true crop rather than something cheap to plant in the poorest fields. It is very responsive to rotation with soybeans and wheat. A three-crop rotation can be done with drills or air-seeding equipment without needing a cornhead on either no-till or conventional management.

Milo is also very responsive to no-till production, which can help provide significant water and cost savings. In a southeast Nebraska survey sorghum had yield increases of 13 bushels per acre following soybeans and 14.4 bushels per acre following wheat.

Dryland crop yields reported in the table below are taken from an on-going farm field survey in southeast Nebraska and indicate the value of various rotations. The complete survey is available at the Gage County Extension Web. (From the home page click to continue and select the PowerPoint presentation on the bottom center of the index page.) The complete study shows that milo competes well in southern Nebraska in profitable dryland crop rotations.