Finance Capital, Food Security Narratives and Australian Agricultural Land

The growing involvement of financial actors in food production has been one of the major recent transformations in the global agri‐food system. This ‘financialization’ of the agri‐food sector has been observed at various levels, from commodity speculation to direct investment in agricultural product...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of agrarian change 2015-10, Vol.15 (4), p.592-603
Main Authors: Larder, Nicolette, Sippel, Sarah Ruth, Lawrence, Geoffrey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agricultural land
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Australia
capital
finance
financialization
Financing
Food
food production
food security
Food supply
foods
investment
Investment banking
Investors
narratives
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Summary:The growing involvement of financial actors in food production has been one of the major recent transformations in the global agri‐food system. This ‘financialization’ of the agri‐food sector has been observed at various levels, from commodity speculation to direct investment in agricultural production, along with farmland itself. While there has been concerted effort to track new landownership and control associated with financial actors, especially in the Global South, there has been less impetus to examine the motives of financial actors' engagement in food production and the narratives upon which such engagement is based. This paper examines the way in which a productivist food (in)security discourse is employed by financial actors to legitimate their actions and to position themselves to win public approval. We analyse two cases of agri‐finance investors in the Australian context engaged in the discourse of food (in)security in relation to their agricultural investments – the Macquarie Group and Hassad Australia.
ISSN:1471-0358
1471-0366
DOI:10.1111/joac.12108