FG

I think the difference that most of us farmers on THIS side of the table see is that for 500 yrs we've been used to selling our commodities for bid-type trading prices. We take what buyers give/gave us. We could & did store grain for months on end only to sell it at a loss, or certainly a lesser price than when it was put in storage. That happened more times than most of us would care to admit. We have/had no control over the commodity pricing except to say yes or no. Didn't have anything to do with higher/lower pricing or profit/loss of any kind.

However, in that same 500 yrs we've had input prices well established many months ahead of time. College-type economists kept telling us dumb farmers we had to know our costs to even hope to be successful or stay in farming. Well, now, this is changing. Fertilizer, nitrogen, and now pesticides seem to be following the commodity markets...or seem to be following them on the upward swing. I still say they will not come down when markets do. What do we now use for input pricing? Almost gotta wait to you use the product. Locally fert dealers will NOT allow prepay on N or fert unless it's going to be used immediately...then that's not really prepay as we envision it. This is new.

I don't think farmer marketing ever had anything to do w/gouging because we were not in control of the pricing....unless you farm with some other sales method than we do on our cash grain farms.