[CrazyStat]

> If you’re a good guy, you’d leverage this data to empower farmers. If you’re an asshole, you’re looking to see who has planted your crop illegally, or who is breaking your insurance fine print, etc.

How does using it to speculate on crop futures rank?

[Waterluvian]

Every time someone explains the way short selling or speculative markets work, I have a “oh, I get it…” moment and then forget months later.

Same with insurance… socialized risk for our food supply is objectively good, and protecting the insurance mechanism from fraud is good. People can always bastardize these things.

[bluGill]

It is complex. I was going to write out how it works in a simple way that everyone could understand - but then I realized that even though it would be a gross simplifications that are unrealistic, it still would be so complex that people would go "yep I understand that to every step", and then finish and not understand it. Every step alone makes perfects sense and is simple, but the total quickly gets complex.

Even calling this a speculative market is a gross simplification of the truth.

[wbl]

It is good to enable people to hedge against bad harvests.

[bluGill]

There are two sides hedging against bad harvests, the farmer that grows the crop, and the industry (cattle, ethanol, food oils, and others) that buys that crop. The farmer wants to get paid, and the industry wants to get their crop.