Finance Capital, Food Security Narratives and Australian Agricultural Land

Abstract

The growing involvement of financial actors in food production has been one of the major recent transformations in the global agri-food system. This ‘financialization’ of the agri-food sector has been observed at various levels, from commodity speculation to direct investment in agricultural production, along with farmland itself. While there has been concerted effort to track new landownership and control associated with financial actors, especially in the Global South, there has been less impetus to examine the motives of financial actors’ engagement in food production and the narratives upon which such engagement is based. This paper examines the way in which a productivist food (in)security discourse is employed by financial actors to legitimate their actions and to position themselves to win public approval. We analyse two cases of agri-finance investors in the Australian context engaged in the discourse of food (in)security in relation to their agricultural investments – the Macquarie Group and Hassad Australia.

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 Larder (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.

Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Lawrence (The University of Queensland)

Geoff is a leading Australian sociologist with interests in rural and regional sociology, globalisation/localisation and agrifood research.

He attended James Ruse Agricultural High School in Sydney and was School Captain in 1968. He then completed a degree in agricultural economics at Sydney University in 1972. This was followed by a diploma in social science (UNE), Master of Science in Sociology (Wisconisn-Madison) and a PhD (Griffith). In 1992 he became Associate Professor of Sociology and Foundation Director, Centre for Rural Social Research, at Charles Sturt University before moving later that year to Central Queensland University as Foundation Professor of Sociology (1992-2002) and Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Regional Development (1998-2002). He joined The University of Queensland as Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Science in 2002. He is a Life Member of the Fitzroy Basin Association, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Life Member of the Australian Sociological Association, and was President of the International Rural Sociology Association (2012-2016). He became Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland in 2014.