Agri-investment Cashing in on COVID-19

Abstract

Global agri-food relationships are continuously changing. However, some periods can be perceived as critical moments when sudden events challenge established patterns and introduce new dynamics within the agri-food system. Many observers identified the food price hikes in 2007/2008 as such a “turning point”. The food price hikes were seen as a stark reminder of the fragility and volatility of the global food system and interpreted as signalling a structural crisis in agriculture and its organizational and institutional frameworks. The 2008 crisis produced both winners and losers. Among the winners were institutional investors that started engaging much more actively in the area of productive resources. Roughly ten years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global agri-food relationships again, perhaps even more profoundly. This chapter juxtaposes the crises of 2007/2008 and 2020/2021 and explores the role of financial actors within them. It analyses how financial investors, who emerged as powerful actors out of the 2008 crisis, responded to, and dealt with, the COVID-19 crisis. It further investigates how the pandemic has been rhetorically framed, what investment strategies were promoted, and how financial investors anticipate their engagement with agri-food in (post-)pandemic times.

Biographical Note

Sarah Ruth Sippel (SFB 1199, University of Münster)

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.