Steve Bruce sees fortunes made and lost nearly every day from his vantage point as a corn trader on the Chicago Board of Trade. He also watches technology and global competition changing the corn market forever.

Steve Bruce didn’t know much about corn, having grown up in Chicago. As a college student in 1974, he visited the Chicago Board of Trade and got his first look at the trading pit from the visitor gallery; he was hooked. “I saw these guys screaming and shouting and said, ‘this is for me.’”

He started as a runner during the day and wheat buyer for General Mills at night while he finished college. Bruce rounded out his education studying agronomy and agricultural economics. He has spent his entire career on the trading floor.

From his view, the global corn market has expanded dramatically. “Twenty-five years ago we were supplying the people who are now supplying the world,” he says.

Consider China, that Bruce says will export 10 to 12 million bushels of corn this year. And once they become more efficient, Russia and Ukraine are going to be tough competition.

At the same time, information technology has shrunk the world, allowing traders to respond locally and quickly to changing conditions. “We know when a butterfly sneezes in China,” Bruce says.

He believes open markets offer the most potential to U.S. corn growers in this new environment. “In a perfect world, we’d have a world without borders and free trade,” Bruce says. But like the National Corn Growers Association, he believes dialog across borders is an important step in getting closer to that ideal world trading environment.

Bruce advocates a businesslike approach to the market with a strategy that spreads risk via instruments such as forward contracts. “We have options contracts in the market that you can use to market your crop a lot more efficiently,” he adds. “Options contracts let growers pass the risk on to speculators.”

Viewing niche markets, Bruce sees the most potential for industrial uses, including corn-based polymers for packaging and disposable containers. “If we can make environmentally friendly products, that’s where the growth is going to come,” he says.

Bruce offers this advice to corn growers looking to succeed in the corn market: Improve efficiency and take an active role in marketing. “You have to be the most cost-efficient producer to win the game in the long run,” he says.