"Capitalism A Nuh' Wi Frien'": The Formatting of Farming Into an Asset From Financial Speculation to International Aid

Luigi Russi and Tomaso Ferrando
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Tomaso Ferrando: University of Warwick

No 1-15, IUC Research Commons from International University College of Turin

Abstract: This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency. The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products. We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel funds through private equity initiatives to acquire and invest in farmland. To complete our analysis, we finally set our contribution alongside the alternative represented by food-sovereignty, which offers the promise of heeding to the needs engendered from within the peasant milieu, as opposed to subjugating it to extrinsic quantitative metrics.

Keywords: futures; commodities; speculation; rural sociology; human geography; land grabbing; public-private partnership; commons; social justice; political economy of development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 O16 P16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, October 2015, vol. 6(1):[article 5]

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