Of all the subjects I would expect to hear being discussed over breakfast in our sleepy little Central Ohio village, futures trading wouldn’t be my first guess. And yet this subject is just as likely to be overheard among local farmers these days as how many acres they already have planted and when, which new equipment they’re planning to buy, and the price hogs are bringing at auction.

The faces of these farmers aren’t the old, grizzled salt-of-the-earth types I remember from my childhood. The men — yes, all of them are men — may prefer jeans, flannel shirts and boots like their fathers before them, and getting dressed up may mean switching from work boots to cowboy boots.  But there the resemblance to previous generations of farmers ends.

Many are savvy agri-businessmen who have learned to use futures options to minimize losses in a market when grain prices plunge. This is not your father’s agri-business anymore.