No future for onions

Traders playing the oil futures market are among the culprits blamed for sending the price of a barrel of oil north of $140 in recent weeks.

While this five-fold price rise in five years has spread pain across the global economy, to onion buyers such wild swings are just part of doing business, according to CNN/Money:

Since 2006, oil prices have risen 100%, and corn is up 300%. But onion prices soared 400% between October 2006 and April 2007, when weather reduced crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only to crash 96% by March 2008 on overproduction and then rebound 300% by this past April.

Federal law has barred an onion futures market since the late 1950s, the only agricultural commodity for which the U.S. government prohibits a futures market.

Bob Debruyn of Debruyn Produce, a Michigan-based grower and wholesaler, is the son of one of the original onion growers who lobbied Congress for the trading ban and now thinks the market would operate more smoothly with an onion futures contract.

"I would think that a futures market for onions would make some sense today, even though my father was very much involved in getting rid of it," he said.