[cogman10]

I grew up on a farm and lived around farmers. This is my lived experience.

I saw first hand farmers tear up a barley fields to plant wheat when the price got high enough.

Farming is a game of speculation. Planting last year's cash crop can be a successful strategy just like buying APPL today will likely yield good returns. Yet, it's a very hard market to predict with a lot of luck involved. Maybe only a few chase the cash crop and you win big. Maybe everyone does and you lose. Maybe there's a natural or political disaster that pumps up your crop.

There was nothing insulting, condensing, or dismissive about my comment. Highly speculative markets, like food, have booms and busts that can swing wildly. That's bad for something like food. The free market does not work with crops.

[all2]

> The free market does not work with crops.

I'd argue that this should be refined to something like "farmers that speculate heavily struggle in an under-regulated free market".

Financial stability in highly volatile markets depends on appropriate planning, saving, and distribution. I say this from the investment perspective, but I would venture to guess that it also applies to hard goods like food-stuffs.

[cogman10]

I disagree with that refinement.

The nature of farming is speculation. It's inescapable. In a completely free market there's no way to guarantee success. Even with the best planning and saving you can't know what the rest of the market is doing and because of the long tail, you are locked in to harvesting and selling your crop no matter what.

You can speculate and be the farmer that always plants and grows wheat. You'll see booms and busts based on that. You can also switch up what you are growing based on your best guess about demand. Both strategies can be successful.

Funnily, one way to make farming less risky is a futures contract. And, if you know anything about futures commodity trading you know they are some of the most risky forms of trading.