Corn

There are men and women in suits who trade in the futures markets. Some trade oil and some trade hogs and some trade wheat and others trade corn. If you’re a farmer and the spot corn price is high, it might make good sense to sell the crop you’ll be harvesting in November sometime in July. But if you think your crop looks especially good you might want to keep the crop and hope that the rains skip over Iowa so your corn is worth even more by the time it’s ready. This has exhausted my knowledge of corn and the corn markets. But I lied, because I know even more of corn than the men and women who rush in their suits to their desks where four monitors show them the weather here now and the weather in Brazil tomorrow as well as the price of corn now and the price of corn in November. I know that corn costs $10 a dozen in Lake Geneva this summer. If you drive 30 miles West it’ll cost you $7 a dozen. Yes the corn will be inferior, but you’ll be saving $3. If you drive 42 miles past the last stop it’ll be marked at $5 a dozen and if you’re really into driving you could end up in an unincorporated rural town near the Mississippi River where the corn will run you $3.75 per dozen. If you sneak that dozen into a baker’s dozen you have, without a doubt, cornered the market on sweet corn and you should be not only recognized, but applauded and appreciated by your friends, your family, and anyone who thinks about corn even a fraction as much as I do.