Farmer survey shows knowledge gap on futures contracts

Farmers Weekly carried out a survey to find out the extent to which UK farmers use futures and options markets.

The survey received 85 responses and of those only 42% were using futures contracts to market grain.

The feedback received from the survey suggested the main reason many farmers are not currently using futures contracts is due to a lack of knowledge and understanding on the subject.

Of the respondents that were already engaging in futures contracts, the main reasons to use them were to spread risk, inform decision making and for budgeting.

More than half of the responses to the survey described their current knowledge on futures contracts as three out of five or below. A total of 24.7% of responses described their current knowledge as good and 18.8% as very good.