CHAPTER XXXIX 

 MILLETS 



THE name millet is applied to a considerable variety of plants, 

 such as cultivated forms of fox-tail grasses, barnyard grass, while in 

 India the common varieties of sorghum are known as giant millets. 

 Practically all the millets, however, are coarse-growing annual 

 grasses, bearing a large, compact seed head (Fig. 163). The culture 

 of millets is very ancient, probably as early as the culture of wheat. 

 Millets are especially adapted to primitive agriculture, as they can 

 be grown with little or no preparation of the soil, and show some 

 tendency to run wild where they do well, while the seed heads are 

 easily harvested and prepared for feed. Up to quite -recent time, it 

 is probable that the millets, including sorghum, formed the most 

 important source of cereal food for mankind, but in most countries 

 millet seeds have been replaced by rice and wheat as human food. 

 Millet and sorghum seeds, however, are still very extensively used in 

 India, China, and North Africa. 



Distribution. In the United States the millets have been used 

 principally as forage crops. The culture of millet as a forage crop 

 is most extensive in the upper part of the great plains, from Dakota 

 to Kansas, while from Kansas southward sorghum largely takes the 

 place of millet as an annual forage crop. 



The development of these two annual forage crops in the great 

 plains is probably due to the fact that the standard hay crops of 

 the East, timothy and clover, do very poorly in the great plains. In 

 the past, prairie hay was the principal hay grass of the great plains. 

 As the prairies have been broken up, alfalfa has become the prin- 

 cipal perennial forage, but it is rather expensive to secure a stand of 

 alfalfa and it is only adapted to long rotation systems, so consider- 

 able place has been found in this region for an annual forage crop 

 like millet and sorghum. 



Kinds of Millet. In the United States the name millet is ap- 

 plied to four very distinct types of annual grass : ( 1 ) fox-tail millet ; 

 (2) broom-corn millet; (3) barnyard millet; and (4) pearl millet. 



Fox-tail millet is the most important group, and constitutes prob- 



