The original concept was called a forward in the agricultural space in the United States around Chicago. So you could enter a contract with somebody, a commodities broker that would basically say look, I'm going to sell your grain to me in the future at a fixed price. And so they were traded sort of like back and forth between probably private hands in places like Chicago. Today with the advent of electronic exchanges and just the financialization of what maybe the farmer is thinking may not be as clear-cut but it's still an important part of his life.
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The exchange of goods and services has existed since the earliest forms of civilization, from simple barter arrangements at the local town square to Phoenician traders navigating the Mediterranean with goods from Europe and North Africa. Today, however, the scope of exchange is truly massive, with online commerce coming to dominate nearly all segments of retail, and the scale encompassing transoceanic trade routes totaling 11 billion tons in maritime cargoes in 2021. Underpinning all this lies an extremely complex web of producers, shippers, pipelines, warehouses, and commodities traders that include the massive concerns such as Koch Industries in energy and Glencore in metals, with over 100,000 employees each. Billions of dollars have been made and lost in commodities futures, and as volatility continues to disrupt prices of everyday items from gasoline to grain, the trend of ever tighter global trade integration seen since the end of the Cold War may start to unravel as regional blocks choose to have closer and more reliable supply chains.
