Don't contract to deliver unless you expect to be able to deliver.

Using physical contracts at the elevator as a hedging tool is illegal and has landed people in jail.   You better have a reasonable expectation that you can deliver the bushels at the time you contract with the elevator.   Maybe someone can post the link to the guy who was selling corn to co-ops in the midwest from his homeplace of Arizona so that he could speculate on prices and wouldn't have to put up margin money.  Prices rose and fell and he wanted the co-ops to write him a check and not deliver any grain.  landed him in jail.

What is your goal by contracting now?  If you are thinking the harvest price will be lower than now, buy some puts.  If you think prices will rise, just wait and cash the insurance check when it comes.

Mark Vanderploeg was his name http://www.startribune.com/business/103763309.html

From the article:

"Vanderploeg and his companies are charged with delivery of false or knowingly inaccurate reports. The CFTC this week obtained an emergency federal court order freezing his assets. Vanderploeg declined to comment.

Between August 2007 and December 2008, Vanderploeg and his firms entered into forward contracts with elevators and co-ops, which buy grain from farmers, the complaint said. A forward contract is a cash transaction that locks in a price for a farmer.

Vanderploeg committed to selling more than 1 million bushels of grain during the 2008 harvest alone, and also made deals with grain buyers in Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Illinois. However, unbeknownst to the grain elevators, Vanderploeg didn't have the ability to produce the grain he'd committed to deliver, according to the complaint.

His commitments instead were allegedly part of scheme to collect money the elevators made through hedging transactions."