Wayne Hanna, an agricultural scientist in Tifton, Ga., sees a
day when farmers may not
have to worry so much about rain.

For 30 years, Hanna has worked with pearl millet, a crop that
looks and grows much like
young corn. But pearl millet doesn’t get nearly as thirsty.

When other crops shrivel in dry weather, the millet thrives.
Its roots have such a
distinct dislike for soggy soil that they almost appear to
prefer
dusty dirt.

“The roots will come to the top of the ground,”
said
Hanna, a plant breeder
with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. “Pearl
millet doesn’t like really wet soil.”

If the crop likes dry dirt, Georgia fields have had plenty to
devote to it during the
past three years. As the state’s farmers struggle to get water
to
their crops, pearl
millet seems increasingly a crop whose time has come.

Drought-tolerant
Crop

“It’s probably the most drought-tolerant grain crop you
can grow,” Hanna
said.

Georgia farmers tried growing about 35,000 acres of pearl
millet in the early 1990s.
But a disease called rust wiped out the crop.

Farmers don’t have to worry about that now. “We have the rust
disease problem
solved,” Hanna said.

The state’s huge poultry industry could be an ideal market
for millet. Broiler growers are interested in substituting pearl
millet for some of the corn that goes into chicken feed.

The crop could greatly help poultry producers, since Georgia
grain farmers don’t grow nearly enough corn to feed the more than
100 million chickens the state’s broiler growers produce
each month. And corn imported from other areas carries a higher
price tag than local grain.

Pearl millet could be a blessing to Georgia’s grain farmers,
too. Supplying millet to poultry growers could create a potential
$45 million Georgia market in about five years.

Perfect for
Poultry

“It would fit just perfectly into the poultry industry
for Georgia and the
Southeast,” Hanna said.

Farmers could plant pearl millet seeds, water them for two
days and essentially forget
about the crop until harvest about three months later. Grain
buyers are expected to pay
about the same price for pearl millet as they would for
corn.

But Georgia farmers have grown corn for generations. Some may
not want to risk trying
to grow the new crop.

And even if they tried it, they’d have to grow enough pearl
millet to supply the
potential new markets. They’d have to meet the needs of poultry
and other livestock
producers.

It’s not a sure thing. But with pearl millet’s
drought-tolerant nature, the exciting
poultry-market potential and a lingering drought with no end in
sight, switching crops is
a tantalizing prospect for farmers.

Hanna hopes to release two new hybrids of pearl millet in the
next two to three years.
The USDA is thoroughly researching the crop to make sure it
lives
up to its promises.

The state of Georgia, the ARS and the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences have joined forces to accelerate research
of pearl millet. They
want to get it into farmers’ hands as fast as they can.