Constructing agri-food for finance: startups, venture capital and food future imaginaries

Sarah Ruth Sippel () and Moritz Dolinga ()
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Sarah Ruth Sippel: Westfälische-Wilhems-Universität Münster, Institute of Geography
Moritz Dolinga: SFB 1199, Leipzig University

Agriculture and Human Values, 2023, vol. 40, issue 2, No 5, 475-488

Abstract: Abstract Over the past decade, investments in agricultural and food technology startups have grown to previously unknown dimensions. Mushrooming agri-food tech startups that promise to solve critical issues in the agri-food system through technological innovation are increasingly perceived as an attractive new investment opportunity for venture capitalists and investors. This paper investigates how digital agri-food technologies are narrated, constructed, and promoted for financial investment. Through qualitative content analysis of agri-food tech industry reports, articles, and commentaries we trace the logic, rationales, and narratives of this most recent investment rush, and reveal its immanent techno-finance fixes. We conceptualize the agri-food imaginaries produced within the agri-food tech discourse as financialized imaginaries, and argue that they are specifically tailored to construct, incentivize, and legitimize this new agri-food tech space for financial investment. In their attempt to raise money from investors, venture capital firms further fuel this development by discursively creating an ‘agri-food tech investment rush’—similar to the land and gold rushes of the past. Investments in agri-food tech startups, however, are presented to investors as both a profitable investment opportunity as well as a moral obligation, allowing for food production to cope with neo-malthusian and environmental threats. This paper contributes to our understanding of digitization as a socio-technical project, which includes the active envisioning and promotion of desirable agri-food futures.

Keywords: Agri-food tech; Imaginaries; Financialization; Digitization; Venture capital; Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-022-10383-6

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