The Redefined Role of Finance in Australian Agriculture

Abstract

In their highly influential teaching and research text Global Restructuring: The Australian Experience Fagan and Webber set out a substantivist, institutionalist and multi-scalar account of the Australian space economy’s relatively rapid and radical globalisation after 1980. This paper extends Fagan and Webber’s global restructuring thesis to Australian farming and agriculture, connecting historical and more recent scholarship on agriculture–finance relations. We highlight two areas where finance has fundamentally reshaped the agricultural sector. First, we argue that financial restructuring has shifted the relationship between farmers and lenders. Second, we suggest that under the logics of finance, Australian land and water are emerging as ‘alternative’ financial asset classes. The paper demonstrates that Australian agriculture has become subject to a comprehensive process of finance-driven economic restructuring over recent decades. Regulatory changes since the 1980s have resulted in an agricultural sector where finance’s growing role is normalised as a part of the sector’s operation. Importantly, we stress the paramount role governments have played in redefining agri-finance relationships in Australia by promoting and providing the regulatory framework for processes of marketisation and assetisation, thereby making agriculture attractive to subsequent financial investments. Finance does not operate on its own but relies on the state’s crucial role in incentivising and setting the conditions for finance capital

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.

Dr. Nicolette Lauder (University of New England)

Dr Larder’s research agenda revolves around the social dynamics of the global agri-food system and the myriad ways people engage with and make sense of the act of food production. Within this broad scope work to date has engaged food producers from varying backgrounds across urban and rural settings and always with the intention of unraveling how food production fits within and contributes to broader social and environmental crises such as land and water scarcity, food insecurity and social inequality. She draws from a wide range of theoretical influences to explore diverse productive environments and producers including political economy, community economies, social movement studies, gender studies and most recently financialisation. Dr Larder has conducted research in Australia and internationally in Mali, Senegal, the UK, and Germany and she is trained in qualitative research approaches including extended fieldwork and cross-cultural research. Current research projects explore the changing nature and character of agriculture in Australia as practiced by investment banks, sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms, with a particular focus on the motivations and changing labour relations associated with financialisation. Future research plans include exploration of the financial literacy of food producers, a comparative study of food sovereignty movements in Australia and North Africa and an evaluation of urban food-banks in Australia.

Prof. Neil Argent (University of New England)

Professor Argent’s research interests centre on understanding the factors and processes that make robust and sustainable rural communities. He is particularly keen on investigating the role of migration – especially city to rural migration and youth out-migration from rural areas – in changing the social and demographic make-up of rural communities. He also has a strong interest in social theory, especially as it relates to our understandings of space and place, and the key roles each plays within our lives. All of these research interests are reflected in his list of grants and publications (below). In summary, he would say that he is a geographer because of his fascination with understanding why standards of living and ways of life vary from place to place. For him it is critical to know these things before we can intervene to tackle problems like poverty and deleterious environmental change.