Agriculturalizing finance? Data assemblages and derivatives markets in small-town New Zealand

Matthew Henry and Russell Prince

Environment and Planning A, 2018, vol. 50, issue 5, 989-1007

Abstract: The financialization of agriculture appears to be proceeding apace. In New Zealand, the creation of a futures market for dairy lends weight to this story. What is less well understood about the process of financialization in agriculture, however, is how exactly it is proceeding. This paper focuses on NZXAgri, an offshoot of the New Zealand sharemarket operator NZX, which is tasked with the creation of the dairy derivatives market, and on the data infrastructure that is being assembled to underpin this trading space. The making of NZXAgri has been a complex process, resulting from the dissipation of a previous agriculture data assemblage during neoliberalization, and now with multiple political and economic projects partially aligned under its banner. Meanwhile, the emerging data assemblage relies on all manner of material and immaterial relational work to produce the necessary dairy production information for consumption by international financial actors. It is this kind of assembling work that is shaping the financialization of agriculture, and it requires constant negotiation with the diverse agencies of farmers and their rural contexts. This suggests that we are seeing the agriculturalization of finance alongside the financialization of agriculture.

Keywords: Financialization; agriculture; data assemblage; financial markets; derivatives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:50:y:2018:i:5:p:989-1007

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18774047

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