other members might find it off-putting when you said you'll have to "farm merits now". anyway, you could "farm"(earn) merits if you can consistently post high-quality posts where other members find them useful or informative. you'll have to put at least an effort into what you do if you want to increase your rank here in the forum.
Merit farming can be considered as one of the abuse of the system that people will not like. The OP seems to get the right advice on how he should be able to earn merit I agree that he should make a post that stand out among the other crap post on the forum
as mentioned by The Pharmacist. I don't think that it will be difficult for him considering currently the OP has managed to get 39 merit since January. The OP also has a good reputation as a trader and maybe it can help him to grow faster if he has a lot of time on the forum.