IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v34y2017i2d10.1007_s10460-016-9707-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Grounding the financialization of farmland: perspectives on financial actors as new land owners in rural Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Ruth Sippel

    (University of Leipzig)

  • Nicolette Larder

    (University of New England)

  • Geoffrey Lawrence

    (The University of Queensland)

Abstract

Sparked by the conjunction of food, fuel, and financial crises, there has been an increasing awareness in recent years of the scarce and finite character of natural resources. Productive resources such as agricultural land have been touted by financial actors—such as merchant banks, pension funds, and investment companies—as providing the basis for a range of new “alternative” financial asset classes and products. While the drivers, motives, and rationales behind the increasing interest of turning farmland into a financial asset class have been traced by a number of scholars, the interpretations of, and interactions with, financial actors at the community level have received less attention. Based on qualitative research in rural Australia, this paper reveals the grounds on which finance-backed investments have been accepted and accommodated by communities in rural Australia and delineates the reasons that have led to feelings of unease or refusal. The paper thereby demonstrates that the financialization of farmland is neither abstract nor one-sided but rather a multidimensional process that not only includes financial actors but also the impacted rural populations in various ways. Positioning the activities of financial actors in Australia within the emerging research on the financialization of farmland, the paper endorses context-sensitive analyses to better interpret these recent transformations of the agri-food system.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Ruth Sippel & Nicolette Larder & Geoffrey Lawrence, 2017. "Grounding the financialization of farmland: perspectives on financial actors as new land owners in rural Australia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(2), pages 251-265, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:34:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10460-016-9707-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-016-9707-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-016-9707-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-016-9707-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marion Dixon, 2014. "The land grab, finance capital, and food regime restructuring: the case of Egypt," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(140), pages 232-248, June.
    2. Andy Pike & Jane Pollard, 2010. "Economic Geographies of Financialization," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 86(1), pages 29-51, January.
    3. Plunkett, Brad, 2015. "PrimeAg Australia 2007-13: A Suitable Structure for Long Term Investment in Agriculture?," Australasian Agribusiness Review, University of Melbourne, Department of Agriculture and Food Systems, vol. 23, March.
    4. Marc Edelman & Carlos Oya & Saturnino M Borras, 2013. "Global Land Grabs: historical processes, theoretical and methodological implications and current trajectories," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1517-1531, October.
    5. Helen Louise Berry & Linda Courtenay Botterill & Geoff Cockfield & Ning Ding, 2016. "Identifying and measuring agrarian sentiment in regional Australia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(4), pages 929-941, December.
    6. Susan Christopherson & Ron Martin & Jane Pollard, 2013. "Financialisation: roots and repercussions," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 6(3), pages 351-357.
    7. Jennifer Clapp & Eric Helleiner, 2012. "Troubled futures? The global food crisis and the politics of agricultural derivatives regulation," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 181-207.
    8. André Magnan, 2012. "New avenues of farm corporatization in the prairie grains sector: farm family entrepreneurs and the case of One Earth Farms," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 29(2), pages 161-175, June.
    9. David Burch & Geoffrey Lawrence, 2013. "Financialization in agri-food supply chains: private equity and the transformation of the retail sector," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(2), pages 247-258, June.
    10. HighQuest Partners, United States, 2010. "Private Financial Sector Investment in Farmland and Agricultural Infrastructure," OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers 33, OECD Publishing.
    11. Cédric Durand & Céline Baud, 2012. "Financialization, globalization and the making of profits by leading retailers," Post-Print halshs-00737045, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bill Pritchard & Elen Welch & Guillermo Umana Restrepo & Lachlan Mitchell, 2023. "How do financialised agri-corporate investors acquire farmland? Analysing land investment in an Australian agricultural region, 2004–2019," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(5), pages 1037-1058.
    2. Jinqian Deng & Yue Gu & Na Zhang, 2024. "Has China’s Pilot Policy of Farmland Management Right Mortgage Loan Promoted County Agricultural Economic Growth?," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-20, June.
    3. Justyna Agnieszka Franc-Dabrowskaa, 2019. "Crawling financialization in Central and Eastern Europe using the example of Agriculture," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 21(3), pages 677-696.
    4. Alexandra Langford & Geoffrey Lawrence & Kiah Smith, 2021. "Financialization for Development? Asset Making on Indigenous Land in Remote Northern Australia," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(3), pages 574-597, May.
    5. Jennifer Clapp & S. Ryan Isakson, 2018. "Risky Returns: The Implications of Financialization in the Food System," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(2), pages 437-460, March.
    6. Nicola Livingstone & Nick Gallent & Iqbal Hamiduddin & Meri Juntti & Phoebe Stirling, 2021. "Beyond Agriculture: Alternative Geographies of Rural Land Investment and Place Effects across the United Kingdom," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-22, October.
    7. Borras, Saturnino M. & Franco, Jennifer C. & Moreda, Tsegaye & Xu, Yunan & Bruna, Natacha & Afewerk Demena, Binyam, 2022. "The value of so-called ‘failed’ large-scale land acquisitions," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    8. Sarah Ruth Sippel, 2018. "Financialising farming as a moral imperative? Renegotiating the legitimacy of land investments in Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(3), pages 549-568, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jennifer Clapp & S. Ryan Isakson, 2018. "Risky Returns: The Implications of Financialization in the Food System," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(2), pages 437-460, March.
    2. Baines, Joseph & Hager, Sandy Brian, 2021. "Commodity Traders in a Storm: Financialization, Corporate Power and Ecological Crisis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar.
    3. Kevin Muldoon-Smith & Paul Greenhalgh, 2015. "Passing the buck without the bucks: Some reflections on fiscal decentralisation and the Business Rate Retention Scheme in England," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 30(6), pages 609-626, September.
    4. Kevin Young & Stefano Pagliari, 2017. "Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(1), pages 3-23, March.
    5. Jennifer Clapp, 2017. "Responsibility to the rescue? Governing private financial investment in global agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 223-235, March.
    6. Tröster, Bernhard & Staritz, Cornelia & Grumiller, Jan & Maile, Felix, 2019. "Commodity dependence, global commodity chains, price volatility and financialisation: Price-setting and stabilisation in the cocoa sectors in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana," Working Papers 62, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE).
    7. Liam Keenan, 2020. "The geographies of the institutional and industrial constraints on the financialization of German brewing," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(8), pages 1662-1680, November.
    8. Phillip O’Neill, 2019. "The financialisation of urban infrastructure: A framework of analysis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(7), pages 1304-1325, May.
    9. Antoine Ducastel & Ward Anseeuw, 2017. "Agriculture as an asset class: reshaping the South African farming sector," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 199-209, March.
    10. Annette Aurélie Desmarais & Darrin Qualman & André Magnan & Nettie Wiebe, 2017. "Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 149-166, March.
    11. Photis Lysandrou, 2016. "The colonization of the future: An alternative view of financialization and its portents," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 444-472, October.
    12. David R. Meyer, 2016. "Shenzhen in China's Financial Center Networks," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(4), pages 572-595, December.
    13. Stefano Di Bucchianico, 2020. "A note on financialization from a Classical-Keynesian standpoint," Department of Economics University of Siena 824, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    14. Bennett, Nathan James & Govan, Hugh & Satterfield, Terre, 2015. "Ocean grabbing," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 61-68.
      • Wehner, Nicholas & Bennett, Nathan & Govan, Hugh & Satterfield, Terre, 2015. "Ocean grabbing," MarXiv bm6pf, Center for Open Science.
    15. Joel Rabinovich & Niall Reddy, 2024. "Corporate Financialization: A Conceptual Clarification and Critical Review of the Literature," Working Papers PKWP2402, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    16. Lisa Kastner, 2017. "Tracing policy influence of diffuse interests: The post-crisis consumer finance protection politics in the US," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-02186320, HAL.
    17. Sergii Borodin, 2021. "Responsible Land-Based Investment in Ukraine: International Regulatory Practice," Oblik i finansi, Institute of Accounting and Finance, issue 4, pages 62-70, December.
    18. Vik, Jostein, 2020. "The agricultural policy trilemma: On the wicked nature of agricultural policy making," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    19. Rashid Khan, Haroon Ur & Islam, Talat & Yousaf, Sheikh Usman & Zaman, Khalid & Shoukry, Alaa Mohamd & Sharkawy, Mohamed A. & Gani, Showkat & Aamir, Alamzeb & Hishan, Sanil S., 2019. "The impact of financial development indicators on natural resource markets: Evidence from two-step GMM estimator," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 240-255.
    20. Gregor Murray & Patrice Jalette & Jacques Bélanger & Christian Lévesque, 2014. "The ‘hollowing out’ of the national subsidiary in multinational companies: is it happening, does it matter, what are the strategic consequences?," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 20(2), pages 217-236, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:34:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10460-016-9707-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.