A mining company would sell gold futures under the expectation that they will mine a known quantity of gold. They trade the risk of price fluctuations to match against their known liabilities (e.g. labor or depreciation of equipment costs).
Now replace “gold” with lithium (for electric car batteries) and you can create the greenwashed story that you want to hear.
I get where you're coming from, and there's a lot which is not great in farming, but hedging values isn't one of those areas.
And technically, futures are a more standardized tool than forwards are, hence the talk about futures all the time. [1] For reference, forwards have been used forever, and used for all sorts of commerce. [2]
We take for granted that you can pull out an iPhone and buy your favorite stock in seconds, but for most of history, nobody could even imagine that. That the modern world even exists is because of forwards and futures. The ancient world was able to grow and expand because of forwards.
[0] - https://www.cftc.gov/About/HistoryoftheCFTC/history_precftc....
[1] - https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/forwardsandfutur...
[2] - https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-soc...
On top of those primary deals, a lot of people pile up making bets on secondary deals. Those are the people going for "hey, a lot more farms are growing rice this year, I bet its price will fall". They are very welcome because they not only stabilize the prices on those markets, but they also provide short-term money to make the deals flow more homogeneously. Without them, making deals on those markets would be a profession by itself (as it was).
Now, there exist people making bets on the results of the bets of the secondary market. That is a different market. At some point it's clear that this becomes toxic, but nobody seems to agree on what point exactly.
> What about the crops they destroy because they would be less profitable?
You mean farmers getting bankrupt? You seem to be misunderstand, because the main reason farmers love the futures market is because it lowers their risks.
> How well will it work if we create unsustainable land that the farmers can no longer grow crops on?
Well, surely if you go and kill everybody, there will be nobody losing money on those markets.
To clarify this point specifically, food self sufficiency is considered a national security issue.
Consider the situation where a hostile country floods your market with cheap food products (below cost) until your country's farms go bankrupt due to an inability to compete. Once you stop producing food of your own, you give significant power to whoever controls your food supply.
This is a large part of why agricultural subsidies exist. And yes, sometimes it means paying farmers to let crops rot on the vine in order to not cause market gluts. That is an entirely different situation from futures and hedging, which in any sane market match supply and demand (with the result of minimizing waste).
The hostile country will eventually go bankrupt because they are producing products below cost.
Additionally, hostile countries do not need to flood markets sustainably if the goal is simply to hollow out food production in the target country before taking more overtly hostile (i.e. military) actions.
They are far from the only example. Airlines use futures to hedge against fluctuations in fuel prices. Manufacturers use futures to hedge against fluctuations in the price of input materials. International businesses use FX swaps to hedge against currency fluctuations. Borrowers use interest rate swaps to hedge against interest rate rises. Investment funds (including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds) use options to hedge against drastic movements in asset prices.
I don't really understand your other questions. The use of derivatives in agriculture does not, on balance, result in fewer crops being produced. On the contrary, by allowing farmers to protect themselves against various risk, derivatives markets allow farmers to safely invest more money in production, and reduces the risk of farmers going bankrupt (bankrupt farmers don't produce many crops). Food would almost certainly be more scarce and more expensive if farmers did not have access to the financial markets.
Oil, gas, lithium, corn....
Because it was created by them, for that very purpose? Futures Contracts. Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Up until 1971 future contracts were ONLY for agricultural goods.
The Dutch (and after the idea had crossed the Channel, the English) were trading debt from the invention of exchanges.
The CME might have started with FX futures in 1971, but they're hardly the first non-agricultural use.
Other examples are _all_ commodities markets like mining, logging, etc.
Of course public company share futures are inherently abstract, but they serve similar purposes, just not to a particularly similar party, depending on your perspective (of ownership, operation).
>what about the crops they destroy
This has nothing to do with the discussion
They didn't just mentioned, they had an outsider negative take on it.
The best way is to respond with simple examples.
> What about the crops they destroy because they would be less profitable? Does the protection against monetary risk outweigh starving people to death? How well will it work if we create unsustainable land that the farmers can no longer grow crops on?
How does futures trading cause these negatives? If anything, trading reduces these risks. Countries with markets have large bounties as opposed to those that don't.
It is not a zero sum game.
What percentage of futures trading is on farmers crops?
What about the crops they destroy because they would be less profitable? Does the protection against monetary risk outweigh starving people to death?
How well will it work if we create unsustainable land that the farmers can no longer grow crops on?