Agricultural futures contracts for apples, Chinese jujube and other products that have been listed on domestic markets in recent years have helped farmers from less-advantaged areas increase their income levels, regulators and experts said on Monday.

The listing of apple futures contracts has provided farmers a tool to monitor price fluctuations in the spot apple market and make reasonable decisions, said Luo Hongsheng, director of the Department of Futures Supervision at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the top securities regulator.

Luo cited the experience of an apple farmer from Yanping county, Northwest China's Shaanxi province: "He (the farmer) began to take the initiative to negotiate apple prices with fruit merchants, different from what he did in the past — accepting bids after roughly reckoning a fair price."

In 2018, the average price of apple sales in Yanping county rose by 30 percent with the aid of price signals provided by apple futures contracts, offsetting the drag of lower yield on sales revenue, Luo said at a forum in Beijing on Monday.

Apple futures contracts were listed on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in late 2017, while Chinese jujube futures contracts were listed on the exchange on April 30 this year as part of the country's ongoing efforts to leverage capital markets to alleviate poverty.

The country has also stepped up financial innovation to lift farmers out of poverty, including piloting financial services that combine insurance with futures, which enable farmers to insure against losses from price fluctuations of agricultural products.

He Jun, deputy general manager at the Shanghai Futures Exchange, said at the forum that the exchange has engineered projects for "insurance plus futures" to reduce price risks faced by rubber farmers in Yunnan and Hainan provinces, which benefited about 79,000 households in 2017 and 2018.

The exchange provided funding for a total of 108 million yuan ($15 million) given to projects over the past two years, and plans to strengthen fund support to incorporate more farmers into the projects next year.