Cashing in on Covid-19? Agri-Investment and the Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 has revealed major weaknesses in the global food system. While agri-food investors have benefited from the crisis by further justifying agri-investment, their approach has failed to tackle the underlying issues of social inequality and workers’ vulnerability, explains anthropologist Sarah Ruth Sippel in her blog post.

Biographical Note

Sarah Ruth Sippel (SFB1199 & Leipzig University)

Sarah Ruth Sippel is a lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and a Principal Investigator at the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1199. Her research interests concern the complex nature of the global agri-food system, particularly questions in relation to food security, the financialization of agriculture and food, and the alternatives that are being developed to the current agri-food system. All these issues raise important questions in relation to politics, ethics, and social justice, which motivate her research. As a human geographer with a background in Middle Eastern Studies and Philosophy, Sarah investigates social phenomena from an interdisciplinary and transregional perspective. She intensively worked on the interlinkages between export agriculture, rural livelihood security, and labour migration in North Africa and the Western Mediterranean. Her current research addresses the diverse (re)imaginations of land in Australia.