Long hailed as a 'miracle crop,' the versatile sorghum plant is being hailed as a singular solution to many problems in an increasingly populated, hungry, and energy-starved planet. Will sorghum save the world?

Increasingly, it looks like at least a piece of the answer. While far from a household name in developed countries, the broad-leafed sorghum genus, including all its dozens of species and subspecies, has risen to become the No. 5 ranked cereal in global production, after maize (corn), wheat, rice, and barley. Some 500 million people in 30 countries use it to make leavened and unleavened bread and fermented and unfermented beverages. It is steamed, popped, flaked and consumed as a whole grain or syrup.

The plant's amazing hardiness and utility is pushing cultivation; after having been domesticated in Ethiopia and Sudan thousands of years ago, sorghum has evolved as drought tolerant, enabling different varieties to be grown in India and Micronesia, and in both North America and Latin America. Estimates call for a 65.3 million ton global sorghum harvest for 2016 - up 9% from the prior year.

Nutritionally, it is rich in niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, as well as magnesium, iron, copper, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, and protein. It is also fibrous, gluten-free, and serves as a wheat our substitute, opening up a host of baking options. Its enzymes help to prevent diabetes and its anti-oxidants help prevent cancer.

If sorghum sounds too good to be true, pioneering cross-breeding by Japanese university scientists from 2008 has producing hardier, faster-growing, and sweeter, strains of "super sorghum," that may help solve future energy crises.

"Sorghum grows best in hotter climates, making it ideal for many developing nations with acute energy needs," says Akemi Oosawa, public relations rep at Tokyo-based SOL Holdings, one of the world's first super sorghum commercial growers at a recent local global climate change expo.

SOL sells its seeds and technology abroad where the mature super sorghum plants grow to over five meters tall in under four months. The stalks boast a sugar content of up to 17%, good for making ethanol and biomass energy pellets to run everything from motor vehicles to electric generators.

"In southeast Asian countries, super sorghum helps to stretch gasoline supplies, and take pressure off precious government subsidies that can be redirected to more productive means. It's a business for us, but it's partly philanthropic in the sense in that it helps to make countries more self-sufficient."

In 2015, the company gained permission from Vietnam's government to form a joint venture with a local firm to plant super sorghum that will eventually reach 10,000 hectares by 2017. The first 1,000-hectare phase of the project is projected to yield 45,000 tons of bio-pellets and up to 30,000 tons of animal food. In Indonesia, just one hectare of super sorghum has been shown to yield nearly 18 kiloliters of ethanol per year, more than twice the production of sugar cane, the next closest bio mass source.

"The main issue with biofuels is competition with food supplies; there is less rice, corn, and sugar to eat when too much of it is diverted to satisfying energy needs," says Ms. Oosawa. "Sorghum relieves the pressure on traditional food supplies."

Other 'hidden' benefits of super sorghum include its tolerance to many pollutants, its ability to thrive in toxic soils that kill most plants, and its cleansing effect on the soil by soaking up excess fertilizers.

The increasing global awareness of sorghum has been undeniably good for SOL; in August 2016, it signed a memorandum of understanding to develop up to 500,000 hectares of land in Mexico for a variety of uses, including biofuels that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and help to shore up the Mexican economy.

The deal comes at a good time for Mexico and other big sorghum consumers, as China has quickly come to control the global market. The surge in China's sorghum imports is one of the most dramatic trade shifts of recent years; as recently as 2013, when it took in just 3,376 metric tons, China was a minor purchaser.

But by mid-August 2016 it had already bought 8.1 million tons, mostly to satisfy animal feed demand, and making it one of the fastest growing users on the planet, according to a USDA Foreign Agricultural Service report. The U.S. accounts for almost all of China's sorghum imports.