Agricultural derivatives as a soya trading mechanism

The derivatives market is relatively new in Brazilian agribusiness and aims among other things to minimise the risk of losses in marketing. The commercialisation of products is one of the most important stages of agricultural activity. Various studies have focused on variations in product prices as one of the main sources of risk for rural producers. On the other hand it has been questioned why producers do not make extensive and significant use of derivatives market mechanisms to protect themselves against such risks. The aim of this study was to understand the suitability of these mechanisms for soya producers' attitudes to reducing product price risks focusing on producers in the Rio Verde GO region. To this end exploratory and descriptive methodological procedures were adopted based on a literature review and interviews using a structured questionnaire. The sample of producers was defined considering the size of the population and a sampling error of 7% with the producers chosen at random. The questionnaire and database were formatted and developed using SPHINX 5.0 software.