Plant City, Fla., farm boy runs New York Mercantile Exchange.

Byline: Dave Simanoff

Sep. 23--TAMPA, Fla. -- As a boy growing up in Plant City, James E. Newsome always imagined a future on the family farm.

Those plans didn't pan out.

Newsome, son of a strawberry farmer, took the reins last month as president of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the largest marketplace in the world for energy, oil and precious metals.

No one is more surprised than Newsome.

"As a youth, and even as a college student, this is certainly not the career path that I had expected or planned out," Newsome said. "I had assumed I would spend my career in the agricultural sector."

The 132-year-old exchange, in the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan, is the place where buyers and sellers meet to trade energy sources such …