Most farmers and their direct consumers will buy/sell a portion of their harvest in advance in the form of commodity grain futures. This protects the farmer fro

Most farmers and their direct consumers will buy/sell a portion of their harvest in advance in the form of commodity grain futures. This protects the farmer from dropping prices and their consumer from rising prices. It's one of the reasons why prices don't shift around a ton from winter to summer anymore. You can also hedge risk against changes in production cost by using instruments that track the difference between raw grains and their immediate products (e.g. Soybean Crush). But that's not really a game the farmer might play. These systems have their limits, and are really there to protect all parties against sudden shifts caused by external events like drought and international trade. When the trend is long and smooth in one direction there's very little the farmer can do to fix their situation via purely financial means. No baker is going to pre-purchase their wheat at old prices when the market price has been slowly declining for a decade.