Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | I think your "farming income: yield x harvest price minus inputs" should be more like "yield x average annual price minus inputs and storage." Selling all at harvest is a marketing decision. If you're going to be a purist and completely seperate farming and marketing, you need to sell at a steady pace year round.
I much prefer making money by doing the farming. Pricing and futures tend to make me lose sleep. IMO if you need to be able to grow a crop and sell it for the average price over a long period of time and make a profit. If you can't do that you're doing something wrong. Like you indicate, if you're really relying on making sales at just the right time to pay the bills, you might as well save the sweat of actually farming and just become a trader. Easier said than done though, as a bad year farming is likely a lot easier to explain to a banker than a bad year speculating.
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Income: Farming vs marketing grain vs spec trades
