Hedging with Futures: An Experiential Learning Game

Hedging is often an integral concept in agricultural futures and marketing courses as well as extension marketing workshops. Textbook and chalkboard examples offer students of these courses the ability to understand the concept and learn the mathematics. However, this mode of instruction is less intuitive and does not have a real-world feel. The purpose of this paper is to present an interactive hedging game that was developed to provide students with a more realistic hedging experience that improves the understanding of the mechanics of hedging. Under the premise of an eastern Nebraska corn producer using actual data, a spreadsheet was designed that displays market information to the students who then must make decisions about the number of futures contracts to trade. Pre- and postgame results indicate a positive learning outcome, and students responded favorably when asked if the game enhanced their understanding of hedging.