[swerveonem]

What services do the middlemen provide? Are those services truly unneeded or will the farmer have to develop those skills and/or outsource to a different company? It seems like there is an opportunity here when viewed through traditional product distribution eyes but can a farmer ship direct to customer, organize bonds and insurance, navigate the futures markets?

[Growing]

Perhaps a co-operative owned by the farmers themselves would be the best approach

[mcclell3]

In this case the middlemen do serve a purpose. The infrastructure that provides farmers access to a global market is typically provided by companies like Cargill and ADM. The part this article points out which is important is the value of on farm storage. By storing a large amount of grain and using modern hedging strategies afforded by most crops being commodities farmers can make money in an area otherwise controlled by Adm and Cargill (storage and marketing). Distribution of the product globally will be hard for any large farm to handle at scale.