Monday, February 06, 2012
Encouraging
NPR reports on a small but heartening exception to the overall death of storage in the modern world. The exception arises from a dubious assumption, and may prove to be ephemeral.
Farmers in the Corn Belt are quickly putting up more grain bins on their own property, in order to act as their own sales agent. This trend seems to have started from the artificial Goldman Boom in 2008, which happened only because Goldman needed a new market to vampirize after it had sucked all the blood from the housing market.
The farmers are trying to play the Day Trader game on their own. Some of them may win, but overall the odds are stacked against the individual operator.
Sounds awfully familiar. In the stock market, the 1990s dot-com bubble inspired lots of folks to try trading stocks on their own. A few made good money; most went bankrupt.
NPR interviewed a co-op manager who brought things down to non-bubble reality: With a natural commodity like grain, commoditized mass production works nicely. The co-op can manage the stored grain of many farmers at once, dividing the costs of buildings, aeration, pest control, fire protection, grading, security and marketing. It's a system that has worked for a hundred years.
Well, what's the encouraging part? Co-ops are also building more storage these days. That's the encouraging part! ¶ 6:08 AM
Farmers in the Corn Belt are quickly putting up more grain bins on their own property, in order to act as their own sales agent. This trend seems to have started from the artificial Goldman Boom in 2008, which happened only because Goldman needed a new market to vampirize after it had sucked all the blood from the housing market.
The farmers are trying to play the Day Trader game on their own. Some of them may win, but overall the odds are stacked against the individual operator.
Sounds awfully familiar. In the stock market, the 1990s dot-com bubble inspired lots of folks to try trading stocks on their own. A few made good money; most went bankrupt.
NPR interviewed a co-op manager who brought things down to non-bubble reality: With a natural commodity like grain, commoditized mass production works nicely. The co-op can manage the stored grain of many farmers at once, dividing the costs of buildings, aeration, pest control, fire protection, grading, security and marketing. It's a system that has worked for a hundred years.
Well, what's the encouraging part? Co-ops are also building more storage these days. That's the encouraging part! ¶ 6:08 AM
