The role of financial markets in promoting food security

Agriculture is an uncertain business, but key to shared global prosperity. Farmers face price, production and financial risks, often due to forces beyond their control. Climate change and globalization are adding to the risk landscape, creating unstable food markets, particularly for farmers in low-income countries in the global south. For centuries, the use of agricultural commodity exchanges has helped farmers mitigate their risks, fix their prices for the future and better plan their production and investment decisions, as well as effectively manage cash flow. This chapter presents the argument for the use of organized, transparent and well-regulated agricultural commodity exchanges, and argues that they play a vital and necessary role in helping to transfer risk in the agricultural commodity industry to those who can best bear it, whilst giving greater income certainty to vulnerable actors, thus contributing positively to food security, and strengthening implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goals.