Infrastructures of Farmland Valuation in Australia

Abstract

This article investigates how valuation practices change as land becomes financialised in Australia. Financial investors bring their own assumptions on how land value should be ‘measured’ to enhance its fungibility as a financial asset. Importantly, this includes a shift to a ‘future income’ approach to value, which produces frictions with established land valuation practices. Combining valuation and infrastructure studies, I examine how conceptualisations of value; techniques of standardisation, classification and comparison; devices for measuring and calculating; templates and databases; social networks and relationships; as well as multiple materialities facilitate, legitimise and stabilise land value. These infrastructures of value are crucial for making new conceptualisations of value productive while both enabling and limiting change in valuation practices. Value further emerges as an important infrastructure itself. Shared understandings of value, embedded and expressed in valuation infrastructures, work as a ‘conduit’, a mechanism necessary for people to come to agreements in exchange processes.

Biographical Note

Dr. Sarah Ruth Sippel

Dr. Sarah Ruth Sippel is an accomplished scholar specializing in critical agrarian and agri-food studies, investigating farmland investments, financialization of nature, and the intersection of finance, agri-food tech, and digital farming technologies. Her academic journey includes a Magister Artium in Middle Eastern Studies and Philosophy, a Ph.D. in Geography, and a Habilitation in Geography, all from Leipzig University.

With a regional focus on the Mediterranean, Australia, and the U.S. (California), Dr. Sippel´s work contributes to understanding global processes and spatialization in the complex dynamics of agrarian studies and agricultural transformations.