Food Security or Commercial Business? Gulf State investments in Australian agriculture

Abstract

Worldwide investments in agricultural land have gained much attention in recent years, resulting in renewed awareness of land as being a scarce and finite resource. This paper investigates a case of South-to-North land deals, namely investments from the Arab Gulf targeting agricultural land in Australia. For the Arab Gulf States that highly depend on external food supplies, investment abroad is one strategy to guarantee future food security. At the same time, leading Australian political and economic representatives have been eager to attract investments from the Gulf. Increasing foreign investment in Australian land has, however, provoked a vivid public debate in Australia. Concepts of foreign direct investment and its role are currently renegotiated on the federal level with regard to Australia’s own food security, the ‘national interest’ and the redefinition of ‘Australian agricultural land’. While these concerns also play out on the local level, investments have to be seen within the wider context of Australian ruralities. The paper reveals how food security and commercial and financial interests intersect and become blurred within current transformations of the global agri-food system.

Biographical Note

Dr. Sarah Ruth Sippel ( SFB 1199 & Leipzig University)

Sarah Ruth Sippel is a Senior Researcher at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia. She studied Middle Eastern studies and philosophy in Leipzig and Aix-en-Provence and received her PhD in geography. She has intensively worked on the interlinkages between export agriculture, rural livelihood security, and labour migration in North Africa and the Western Mediterranean region. Her current research explores the nexus between global food security, financialization of natural resources, and emerging forms of solidarities within global agri-food systems. She is Principal Investigator of a four-year research project on imaginations of land (C04, SFB 1199) funded by the German Research Foundation.

Sarah Ruth Sippel developed the Explorative Workshop Envisioning the Future of Food Across North-South Divides which is part of the strategic cooperation between the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland. The workshop will take place in Berlin from 1 to 3 December 2016.