by Fred Fuld III
Have you ever thought about trading or investing in an agricultural commodity, possibly as an inflation hedge, such as wheat, corn, soybeans, or even coffee?
But maybe you didn’t want to get into futures because of the risk or lack of understanding or both.
Well, there is another way to trade these food items, and that is through the agricultural commodities exchange traded funds.
Probably the safest way is through an ETF that has a diversified portfolio of agricultural products, such as the Invesco DB Agriculture Fund (DBA), which has an investment objective of investing in a portfolio of exchange-traded agricultural futures.
If you think the price of corn is going to take off, you could trade the Teucrium Corn Fund (CORN).
Or maybe you think the demand for sugar is going to increase, causing the sugar price to spike. You have a couple of alternatives, the iPath Series B Bloomberg Sugar Subindex Total Return ETN (SGG) and the Teucrium Sugar Fund (CANE).
If you like chocolate, there is the iPath Bloomberg Cocoa Subindex Total Return ETN (NIB).
The following is a list of the agricultural commodities ETFs.
| Commodity | Symbol | ETF Name | Total Assets* |
| Agriculture | DBA | Invesco DB Agriculture Fund | 1,018,170 |
| Agriculture | RJA | Elements Rogers International Commodity Index-Agriculture Total Return ETN | 153,758 |
| Corn | CORN | Teucrium Corn Fund | 120,848 |
| Coffee | JO | iPath Series B Bloomberg Coffee Subindex Total Return ETN | 94,895 |
| Wheat | WEAT | Teucrium Wheat Fund | 75,645 |
| Soybean | SOYB | Teucrium Soybean Fund | 44,971 |
| Sugar | SGG | iPath Series B Bloomberg Sugar Subindex Total Return ETN | 26,419 |
| Sugar | CANE | Teucrium Sugar Fund | 22,844 |
| Cocoa | NIB | iPath Bloomberg Cocoa Subindex Total Return ETN | 22,713 |
| Grains | JJG | iPath Series B Bloomberg Grains Subindex Total Return ETN | 21,563 |
| Cotton | BAL | iPath Series B Bloomberg Cotton Subindex Total Return ETN | 20,602 |
| Livestock | COW | iPath Series B Bloomberg Livestock Subindex Total Return ETN | 19,665 |
| Agriculture | TAGS | Teucrium Agricultural Fund | 14,180 |
| Agriculture | JJA | iPath Series B Bloomberg Agriculture Subindex Total Return ETN | 11,211 |
| * In thousands |
You will notice that some of these are ETNs (Exchange Traded Notes) as opposed to ETFs. ETNs are senior, unsecured debt securities similar to a bond
Keep in mind that these funds are very volatile, very speculative, and can have low volume and very wide spreads.
Disclosure: Author is long JO and WEAT.