So while I'm all for more regulations, I think we shouldn't demonize an entire sector without considering that some of what it does can and has be helpful.
It talks extensively about how the markets were set up for exactly this purpose, and that the balance of long and short positions for the futures kept the market relatively stable in exactly this way, until the relatively recent (1990s) influx of commodity indices pushed a whole bunch of money purely into long positions and destabilized the market by, effectively, buying far more futures contracts than there was actual wheat.
Edit: and buy not buying any short futures to counterbalance them.
The author of the article doesn't seem to understand that. He says:
> The managers of this new product would acquire and hold long positions, and nothing but long positions, on a range of commodities futures. They would not hedge their futures with the actual sale or purchase of real wheat (like a bona-fide hedger), nor would they cover their positions by buying low and selling high
But that is irrelevant since there were other market participants selling the futures. The author also fails to understand that rolling a contract implies covering your position at contract expiration and then buying another contract.