Working guidanceWe run this. It has produced results under the conditions stated on this page.
Sourcing Sorghum Farmer-Direct
Everything below is drawn from commercial practice between 2018 and 2020, including the specification actually used and the batch that was lost when it was not met.
Links
National Sorghum Producers — The growers' association, and the practical starting point for finding a farmer. They can route you to a state-level association, and state associations know their members personally. Contact · Lubbock, TX
FGIS Grain Sampling — The federal service that produces the grain certificate this page's specification is written against.
Supplier Qualification and Identity Preservation — The general discipline, which applies whether you buy from a farmer or an elevator.
Grain Source and Acceptance — What to do when the grain actually arrives.
Verified 4 August 2026 · Re-check every 12 months
The model is contract growing, not shopping
The mental picture of "buying from a farmer" — ringing a grower and ordering grain — is not how this works at any useful scale. What actually happens is acreage committed before planting, usually across several growing regions at once to spread weather risk.
A 2019 planting arrangement covered organic acres in south-central Illinois, organic acres near Lubbock in Texas, and two 40–60 acre blocks in Kansas, plus conventional acres in western Kansas at a grower chosen by the coordinator. Individual farms ran anywhere from 40 to well over 100 acres each.
The consequences of that structure are the whole story:
- You commit before the crop exists. The conversation happens at seed-buying time, not at harvest.
- Variety is decided at planting, because it is decided by what seed goes in the ground. This is the mechanism behind Cultivars for Malting — you cannot ask for a cultivar after the fact.
- You are exposed to weather across every region you planted. Checking on farmers after a heavy rain, and asking whether harvest is still on schedule, was routine.
- Somebody has to coordinate it, and that role has its own economics — see below.
The coordinator in the middle
Contract growing at brewery scale usually runs through an intermediary who sits between the seed supplier, the farmers, and you. Understanding how that person is paid is not optional, because it is where your cost comes from.
The structure documented in 2019 had them paying for seed, seed transportation, the grain itself, and their own cleaning and storage — and earning from a handling upcharge to farmers on seed delivery (around $50 a bag) plus what the brewery paid for finished, cleaned grain.
Ask directly what they pay for and where their margin sits. A coordinator with a thin margin on grain and a fat one on seed handling has different incentives from one paid the other way round, and those incentives show up in what grain you are offered.
What to specify
This is the part nobody publishes. The following is the grain acceptance specification actually used, as issued to a malting partner in June 2019:
| Criterion | |
|---|---|
| A | USDA No. 1 Sorghum or better |
| B | Moisture 14% or less |
| C | Foreign material 1% or less |
| D | Damaged kernels 2% or less |
| E | Test weight 56 lb minimum |
| F | Free of soil particles |
| G | Free from varietal mixtures |
| H | Free from GMO contamination |
| I | Germination 85% minimum within three days, without heavy mould |
| J | Delivered gluten-free — no wheat, barley, rye or oat contamination |
| K | Vomitoxin 0.5 ppm maximum |
| L | Aflatoxin 5.0 ppb maximum |
| M | Fumigated at least once prior to cleaning, with the fumigation report provided |
One coverage gap to notice before you copy this table: it limits vomitoxin (K) and aflatoxin (L) but says nothing about fumonisin — and fumonisin has actually appeared on a certificate for a reviewed lot. If you adopt this spec, set your fumonisin position deliberately rather than inheriting the omission; the reading notes below carry the detail.
Criterion I is the one that separates malting grain from feed grain. Everything above it appears on an ordinary grain contract. Germination does not, because a feed buyer does not care whether the seed is alive — and you are buying a seed you intend to sprout. A lot that passes every other line and germinates at 60% is a failed purchase that no certificate will flag for you.
Criterion G exists because varietal mixtures are real. It is the specification-level answer to why elevator grain is a problem: elevators blend, and a blended lot malts unevenly.
Notes on reading a grain certificate against this spec
A federal grain inspection certificate covers grade, moisture, test weight, foreign material and damage — criteria A through E — and mycotoxin results where ordered. In practice one lot reviewed against this specification came back at 90%+ germination and apparent grade 1, which is a good result.
Two honest gaps in the specification as written:
- It sets limits for vomitoxin and aflatoxin but not fumonisin, and fumonisin appeared on the certificate. The threshold question was put to the malting partner at the time. If you are writing your own spec, decide your fumonisin position deliberately rather than inheriting this omission — and see Grain Storage, Germination, and Mycotoxin Controls.
- It does not state a testing method or who pays for testing. Settle both in writing.
This specification is published as a documented starting point, not as a standard. It reflects one company's requirements for one grain in one period.
Cleaning, storage and handling
Grain arriving from a field is not ready to malt. Somebody has to clean, size and store it, and that somebody is frequently a third party rather than the farmer or the malthouse.
A facility evaluated in 2020 for this role illustrates what to look for: bin space available, equipment to clean and size, a gravity table on the line, and the ability to ship to the malt house in either super sacks or a semi load — the two realistic formats. Notably, it also handled no treated seed. Ask every facility explicitly whether it handles treated seed, and get the answer in writing — seed treated for planting has no business anywhere near grain destined for food.
The questions that follow from that: who cleans, who stores and for how long, in what format it ships, and — for a gluten-free claim — what else moves through that facility and its equipment. See Dedicated Equipment and Facilities and Safe Transport and Custody.
What it cost
Two dated data points from our own purchasing, published as records rather than as current prices:
| When | Grain | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Ivory 7, conventional | $10.50–$11.25 per bushel | The invoice arrived at the higher figure against a lower number discussed by phone — worth checking |
| 2019 | Organic, named cultivar | $0.16–$0.215 per lb, net | Judged high at the time |
At the 56 lb test weight in criterion E, $10.50–$11.25 a bushel works out to roughly $0.19–$0.20 a pound — which puts both figures in a broadly similar band despite one being organic and a year later.
Treat these as calibration, not as quotes. They are years old, tied to specific varieties and volumes, and grain prices move with weather and acreage every season. What they are good for is knowing whether a number you have been given is in a plausible neighbourhood.
Realistic lot size
One organic grower held 12,500 bushels of a named cultivar — roughly 350 tons, which is far more than a small malthouse can take or store. Contract blocks of 40–60 acres per farm were typical.
The practical tension is that the farm's minimum sensible unit is much larger than a small brewery's annual need, which is why the coordinator, the cleaning facility, and staged release out of bin storage all exist. Work out your annual tonnage first, then ask who will hold the rest of the field.
What goes wrong
The most useful section, and the one written from an actual loss.
A malt batch went mouldy in the reactor. The assessment at the time was blunt: this is usually caused by a farmer not taking care of the grain as agreed. The brewery paid for that batch — grain and malt both — and moved to an alternate grain source with the specification above attached to the new arrangement.
Three things that failure teaches:
- The specification is not paperwork. It exists because grain that was stored damp, dried too hot, or left too long becomes grain that will not germinate cleanly — and you discover that in the malt house, after you have paid for it.
- The loss lands on you, not the farmer, unless the agreement says otherwise. Decide in advance who carries the cost of a rejected or failed lot, and write it down.
- Test before it goes near production. A germination check on arrival is cheap. A ruined reactor batch is not.
Other failure modes visible in the same records: weather taking out a region you were counting on, invoices arriving above the price discussed, and grain quality varying between farms in the same contract.
Related Reading
- Sorghum Agronomy and Supply
- What Makes Good Malting Sorghum
- Cultivars for Malting
- Reading a Malt COA
- Lot Identity and Traceability
- Grain Source and Acceptance
Source and Validation Notes
Everything on this page beyond the linked references comes from Bard's Brewing commercial correspondence held in the Gluten Free Brewer source archive, extracted 2026-08-15.
The thirteen-point grain acceptance specification is reproduced verbatim in substance from a message dated 12 June 2019 setting out the criteria to a malting partner. The 90%+ germination and apparent grade 1 result, and the open fumonisin question, are from the same message. The contract-growing structure and regions are from June 2019 planning correspondence; the coordinator's cost and revenue structure, including the approximate $50 per bag seed handling upcharge, from a June 2019 discussion note. The mould loss and the assessment of its cause are from a May 2019 internal message. The cleaning facility description — bin space, cleaning and sizing, gravity table, super sack or semi shipment, no treated seed — is from April 2020 correspondence. The 12,500 bushel organic lot and the $0.16–$0.215 per lb net price, including the judgement that it was high, are from October 2019. The $10.50–$11.25 per bushel Ivory 7 figures and the invoice discrepancy are from April 2018.
No individual, farm, coordinator, malting partner, cleaning facility, or supplier is named, and no third-party quoted price is reproduced. Those are other people's commercial terms and identities, given privately, and are not ours to publish. Our own purchase prices and our own specification are our own business records and are published as dated history.
The bushel-to-pound conversion uses the 56 lb test weight in criterion E and is arithmetic by this site, not a figure from the records. Prices are historical and should not be read as current market rates.