I agree with your analysis on buying the board. I understand that buying the board is being double long. I hope I was not leaving the impression that the original poster should somehow buy the board instead of selling the board. that definitely was not a solution to his question.

I was merely trying to illustrate the point that (strictly from a trading standpoint) if you are going to play a commodity, shorting it in todays environment is more risky than going long. If you go long and the commodity goes down, it will likely only go halfway down (at least at todays prices) before it hits a bottom. If you go short and the commodity goes up, the sky is the limit. A lot of elevators found out 2 years ago how difficult it is to make a banker understand that the value of the crop they have has gone up a lot so it's ok to pay million dollar margin call checks. Yes, on paper it is accurate, but you've got to have solid financial backing or some sort.

I would not advocate buying as a producer unless the market is already close to as low as you could imagine it going (say $2.00 in todays environment) because that would put you in a double long situation. However, I would also not recommend selling a crop that you do not yet have in the bin on the boards unless you truly understand what could happen and have a plan for getting out of that situation.