Most American syrup stories start with a tree. This one starts with a grass. Sweet sorghum grows like a cane; the stalks go through a roller mill and the juice is boiled down in a long flat pan until it thickens into syrup. The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service’s growers’ guide writes down the exchange rate: “It takes from 6 to 12 gallons of raw juice to make one gallon of sorghum syrup.” The same guide refuses the name most people give it: “The term ‘sorghum molasses’ is a colloquial expression incorrectly applied to sorghum syrup. Molasses is a by-product of the sugar crystallization from sugarcane juice.” So it is not molasses, and it never met a tree. In USDA’s 2022 farm census only six states have a printed sorghum-syrup figure at all. Which of these four made the most? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Syrup means maple, maple means cold, and not one of these four is cold. I will take the one with “North” in the name. 🐾
2Answer
The order USDA printed is…
Kentucky — 15,071 gallons out of 37,647 gallons for the whole country, about two of every five, and roughly 1.57× second-place Tennessee. Those top two together make about two-thirds of the country’s whole sorghum-syrup total. Now hold that national number still and look backwards. The same Kentucky guide keeps the state’s oldest count: “The first statistical record of sorghum syrup produced in Kentucky was in 1899 when 21,982 acres were grown and 1,277,206 gal of syrup were produced.” One state, in one year, more than thirty times what the entire United States made in 2022. Sorghum syrup did not fail so much as shrink — from something made in every one of the contiguous 48 states to something a handful of states still make in a window the same guide calls “fewer than 60 days” long. For scale the other way: USDA’s 2024 maple survey put the country’s maple syrup at 5,860,000 gallons, more than 150 gallons of maple for every gallon of sorghum. Biscuit’s Field Note follows the juice from the mill to the pan.
📚 BackgroundMost American syrup stories start with a tree. This one starts with a grass. Sweet sorghum grows like a cane, the stalks go through a roller mill, and the juice is boiled down in a long flat pan. The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service’s growers’ guide writes down the exchange rate — “It takes from 6 to 12 gallons of raw juice to make one gallon of sorghum syrup” — and then corrects the name most people use for the stuff: “The term ‘sorghum molasses’ is a colloquial expression incorrectly applied to sorghum syrup. Molasses is a by-product of the sugar crystallization from sugarcane juice.” It is not molasses, and it never met a tree. It was also once made almost everywhere: “Sweet sorghum syrup has been produced in the United States since colonial days,” the guide says, and “Some sweet sorghum syrup has at one time or another been produced in every one of the contiguous 48 states.” In USDA’s 2022 farm census, six states have a printed figure.(University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-122, “Production of Sweet Sorghum for Syrup in Kentucky” and AGR-123, “Harvesting, Processing, and Marketing Sweet Sorghum for Syrup” (Morris J. Bitzer))↗ (opens in a new tab)
Syrup means maple, maple means cold, and not one of these four is cold. I will take the one with “North” in the name. 🐾
3Compare
Sorghum syrup made (2022 Census of Agriculture)
🇺🇸 United States (national)37,647 gallons
Kentucky#115,071 gallons
Most: Kentucky (15,071 gallons); smallest of the six states USDA printed: Arkansas (200 gallons).
Note: gallons of sorghum syrup made in 2022, from USDA’s Census of Agriculture — a count taken once every five years, not a yearly estimate. This is the syrup line only; sorghum grown for grain or cut for animal feed is counted on separate lines. USDA NASS. USDA printed a sorghum-syrup figure for six states. Six more — Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to 7,543 gallons — more than the 3,785 gallons third place printed. So only the top two here can be called national places; the states below them are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle, and this site re-runs that check on every build.
Green juice in one end, amber syrup out the other 🐾
USDA printed a sorghum-syrup figure for six states. Six more — Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to 7,543 gallons — more than the 3,785 gallons third place printed. So only the top two here can be called national places; the states below them are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle, and this site re-runs that check on every build.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022)
Sources
Data as of: 2022
USDA NASS Quick Stats: SORGHUM, SYRUP - PRODUCTION, MEASURED IN GALLONS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-01) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA printed a sorghum-syrup figure for six states. Six more — Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in the table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to 7,543 gallons, which is more than the third-place state printed — so only the top two here can be called national places, and the rest are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle. This site re-runs that check on every build.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick SORGHUM / SORGHUM, SYRUP - PRODUCTION, MEASURED IN GALLONS, Census year 2022, Total domain, and compare states.