The main landing page for the site has a side bar which displays recent gold transactions for fiat.
I was reading a strategy last night that recommended building farms only and utilizing the market to trade for other needed resources. By only utilizing farms, you do not consume resources (just time) to produce. Not sure how viable the strategy is but seemed to be an interesting idea.
That was my theory as well, considering the base resource (vegetable) doesn't cost any resource except time and (game) energy. And starting unskilled workers never die.