I just had to meet them.
Last week I was in Chicago and took the chance to sit down with the leaders of For Our Futures: Adam Ash, Jacob Neplokh, and Gavin Wynn. They’re the University of Chicago students behind the “Free the Onions” demonstration at the CME on October 19. We had pizza, naturally.
The backstory is fascinating. Last winter, the group was talking at a Friday meeting. Someone asked what it would take to get an obscure law changed. The fact that they were even thinking this way gives some hope for the future. One of them remembered hearing about the onion futures ban. This was Chicago, the home of futures trading. They were UChicago students. The idea was born. And they did it all with a great sense of humor.
The group started with a petition drive on campus last spring. They handed out onions. It worked so well they took the same drive to Northwestern. They also started sharing the idea on social media. That caught the attention of some people in the prediction markets space. When they got back to campus this fall, they wanted something bigger. They wanted real attention on getting the ban overturned. The rest is history, as they say!
The students also pointed out something I definitely did not see coming. Kalshi now trades an event contract on whether the Onion Futures Act will be repealed. As of today, the market puts the odds at about 12% before 2028 and 29% before 2030. A market pricing the chance of ending the onion futures ban. I’m sure Holbrook Working and Roger Gray are smiling somewhere about the irony of that.
And of course I gave them a copy of Back to the Futures.
Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign