Liquid harvest.

Better access to financing is the promise that Chile's farmers hope to see from a new commodities market, the Bolsa de Productos Agropecuarios, now open for business.

Turning receivables into immediate cash is an advantage the exchange will provide farmers, who will be able to sell their invoices rather than wait up to 90 days for clients to pay them. Futures contracts also will be developed, giving producers an instrument for managing price risk. "Chilean agriculture requires new instruments that are more appropriate to the scenarios it now faces," says Chile's Subsecretary of Agriculture Arturo Barrera.

The exchange trades wheat, corn and bulk wine, but offerings could be expanded to include any commodity product. Pulp, salmon, sugar beet, rice, grapes, livestock, poultry, fertilizers, fruit concentrates and malt are possibilities. Food production accounts for more than 10% of Chile's economy, and the country is poised to become one of the world's top 10 food exporters in the next decade, according to Cesar Barros, a director of Santiago consultancy FIT Research, and one of the exchange's founding partners.

Although uncharted territory, the exchange could rack up US$240 million in trades in its first year and $3 billion a year in the medium term, according to private sector estimates.

"Potentially, we could have a very high level of transactions, depending on the products that enter and the talent of the operators," says Barros. The model could be extended to trade Brazilian or Argentine goods.

With such potential, farmers are understandably curious. 'As soon as we convince one of our clients to make a transaction and it goes well, it will immediately have a multiplier effect and incorporate others into the market," says Jorge Rodriguez, general manager at Tattersall, a broker and exchange shareholder.