Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1 Sari University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources.
2 Sari University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources
Abstract
Introduction: Agricultural products market in Iran is facing structural problems with non-competitive and inefficient conditions for trade of agricultural products, which leads to high price fluctuations for these products. Future markets as one of the risk sharing strategies would shift price risk to brokers and intermediaries. So, future markets are considered as one of the best tools for reducing agricultural risk. Designing and implementing future contracts is time-consuming and costly. Therefore, in order to succeed in setting up such contracts, it is essential to pay attention to several main issues consisting selecting the correct commodity for exchange, determining the optimal specification of the future contracts of agricultural products, and the way of decision making and preferences of market participants.
Materials and Methods: Despite the precise design of future contracts, future markets may fail after commencing due to lack of access for farmers, to use these tools. The purpose of this study is to predict future market acceptance by rice farmers in Sari.
To achieve this goal, the positive Mathematical Programming Model (PMP) is used in the simulation of the traditional and future market within the framework of the GAMS software. All required data were derived from statistics provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Statistical Center of Iran during 2000 to 2015. The objective function of the model was a calibrated objective function which maximizes the actual quantities of farmers' production. But it should be noted that in solving this model, it was assumed that when the future market is launched the decision of the producers regarding the amount of production is not affected and only a part of their product will be offered in the future market, rather than in the traditional market, with the aim of reducing the price risk. Since this assumption does not validate in the actual operating conditions and it is expected that the producers' decision-making process would also be affected after entering the futures market and trading in this market.
Results and Discussion: The results of simulation of the traditional market showed that the real average of the production, consumption, and net exports respectively were about 1.1663*10+5, 24074.390 and 1.4071*10+5 tone and the total profit of the producers of these products was about 3.7928*10+8 million Rials..
Based on the results of simulation of future market, the real average of the production, Consumption and Net exports equals about 1.4349*10+5, 26199.05 and 1.1729*10+5 tone respectively and the total profit of the producers of these products is about 3.7958*10+8 million Rials. Thus it is expected that after commencing future market for agricultural products, 44% of all rice farmers would sell their product using future contracts.
Therefore producers' decisions are not affected by the level of production and only a part of their product would be offered in the future market instead of the traditional market with the aim of reducing the price risk. In addition to comparing this market to the traditional market, the launch of the future market will increase the production, consumption and net exports about 1.9, 8.8 and 5.6 percent respectively.
Conclusion: Due to the strategic condition of the rice product and the suitability of this product to enter the future market, it should be noted that in the process of optimal design of future contracts, without paying attention to all dimensions for launching the upcoming market, this market will not be successful. Therefore, in this study determination of the amount of participation by rice farmers before launching a successful future market for rice crops has been considered. The first stage were simulating conditions before the launch of the future market, named traditional market conditions of rice, and the average real values of production, consumption, net exports and total profit of the producers of this product were estimated in Sari city. Subsequently, with the goal of reducing the price risk, the conditions after launch of the future market were simulated that represent about half of rice producers will be participanting in the upcoming market. Base on the results of this study, it is suggested that the launch of futures markets and transfering process to the Agricultural Commodity Exchange would need cultural and extension courses to understand the benefits of entering this market.
Keywords
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