The rise of financial investment and common ownership in global agrifood firms

Jennifer Clapp

Review of International Political Economy, 2019, vol. 26, issue 4, 604-629

Abstract: Financial investment in the food and agriculture sector has grown in recent decades, including investment in equity-related funds that invest in or track the performance of a range of publicly traded transnational agrifood companies. At their height in recent years, equity-related investment funds accounted for around one third of financial investment in the sector. Despite their significance, investment in the agrifood sector via these types of investment funds has received much less academic and policy attention than other types of financial investment, such as farmland acquisition and commodity speculation. This paper examines the rise of equity-related investment in the agricultural sector and analyzes its implications for the food system. It provides an overview and analysis of the available data on these investment vehicles, including their holdings (i.e. the companies in which they invest) and ownership (i.e. the investors who own shares in those companies). This data shows a rise in common ownership of large agrifood firms by large asset management companies. The paper makes the case that this new pattern of investment in agrifood firms by large asset management firms has the potential to contribute to the already concentrated market power in the agrifood system.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597755 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:604-629

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597755

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().