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Abstract
Recent spikes in commodity prices have led to higher margin amounts and option premiums. For
the most part, producers have always attributed their lack of use in reducing risk via futures and
options markets to the high cost associated with the use of these markets. This study determines
the relative costs of hedging with futures and options and compares these with the costs of other
variable inputs. We find that with the exception of hedging corn with both tools and soybeans
with options the costs of hedging has only increased at roughly the same rate as all other inputs.