More evidence of just how destructive our current system is:
Russia’s ban on grain exports, in response to a devastating drought, has sent prices shooting up all over the world. But farmers here in wheat country, far from seeing the spike as an unexpected blessing, are wary.
I wonder why that would be the case- sure sounds like good news:
As planting time approaches next month, they are balancing the possibility of greater income against the failed promises of the past, when bonanzas turned bust, sometimes at terrible cost to their bottom lines and the environment. Even many farmers who plan to plant more wheat are begrudging and hesitant — fearful that global dynamics could shift again between now and next year’s harvest.
I guess that makes sense, but what could cause things to shift so dramatically? Certainly these guys have years of experience with this sort of thing:
“The market says plant more,” said Eugene Schroder, who farms about 4,000 acres here in the flatlands of southeast Colorado near the Oklahoma border, where agriculture’s fingerprint stretches beyond the eye’s ability to see — some fields stubbled and cleared in post-harvest, others tassled and green with corn.
Mr. Schroder said he feared that wheat prices were being manipulated by speculators, as was the case a few years ago, just before the recession, when the price soared and then crashed.
“What is this wheat market? I don’t have a clue, and I’m a professional wheat farmer,” he said. “There’s a complete lack of transparency.”
Far from being able to take advantage of market forces, our wheat farmer friends are cowed into inaction because our markets are fickle and unreliable and prone to manipulation. This is fundamentally no different from the average joe trying to invest wisely in stocks- he can’t because the game is rigged. Our current system is anything but a free market. A free market would mean that people would be able to act with adequate information. We’re a nation being held hostage by these Galtian super-geniuses like Rick Santelli at the CME and that idiot blowhard Jim Cramer.