IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v50y2018i3p549-568.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financialising farming as a moral imperative? Renegotiating the legitimacy of land investments in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Ruth Sippel

Abstract

This paper investigates the debate about foreign investment in Australian farmland. Employing a moral perspective, it is argued that the apparent tensions over foreign land investments in recent years can be interpreted as a renegotiation of the legitimate grounds upon which farmland investments should take place. The analysis shows that elements of worth are being applied to farmland that go beyond the ‘pure’ treatment of land according to market principles. Most notably, national references, together with concerns about control over strategic resources and the involvement of foreign sovereign entities, have gained prominence. Reacting to these concerns, the investment of domestic superannuation capital has emerged as a moral imperative to keep farmland in ‘national hands’. The paper thus stresses the need for a more nuanced differentiation between different kinds of ‘capital’ and particularly the way they are morally evaluated. The paper furthermore reveals that the linkages between capital and ‘nature’ are not forged in a random or arbitrary way. They are crucially shaped by the societal understanding of the legitimacy of certain kinds of capital and their associated motives and intentions as part of the broader understanding about the rules and principles that should govern economic activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Ruth Sippel, 2018. "Financialising farming as a moral imperative? Renegotiating the legitimacy of land investments in Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(3), pages 549-568, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:50:y:2018:i:3:p:549-568
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17741317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X17741317
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0308518X17741317?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arnold, Thomas Clay, 2001. "Rethinking Moral Economy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(1), pages 85-95, March.
    2. Oane Visser, 2017. "Running out of farmland? Investment discourses, unstable land values and the sluggishness of asset making," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 185-198, March.
    3. Helen Louise Berry & Linda Courtenay Botterill & Geoff Cockfield & Ning Ding, 2016. "Identifying and measuring agrarian sentiment in regional Australia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(4), pages 929-941, December.
    4. Sarah Ruth Sippel & Nicolette Larder & Geoffrey Lawrence, 2017. "Grounding the financialization of farmland: perspectives on financial actors as new land owners in rural Australia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(2), pages 251-265, June.
    5. Horacio Ortiz, 2013. "Financial value: economic, moral, political, global," Post-Print hal-00869852, HAL.
    6. Beckert, Jens & Aspers, Patrik (ed.), 2011. "The Worth of Goods: Valuation and Pricing in the Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199594658.
    7. Saturnino M Borras & Jennifer C Franco, 2013. "Global Land Grabbing and Political Reactions ‘From Below’," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1723-1747, October.
    8. Antoine Ducastel & Ward Anseeuw, 2017. "Agriculture as an asset class: reshaping the South African farming sector," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 199-209, March.
    9. Morag I. Torrance, 2008. "Forging Glocal Governance? Urban Infrastructures as Networked Financial Products," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 1-21, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alexandra Langford & Geoffrey Lawrence & Kiah Smith, 2021. "Financialization for Development? Asset Making on Indigenous Land in Remote Northern Australia," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(3), pages 574-597, May.
    2. Jennifer Clapp & S. Ryan Isakson, 2018. "Risky Returns: The Implications of Financialization in the Food System," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(2), pages 437-460, March.
    3. Borras, Saturnino M. & Franco, Jennifer C. & Moreda, Tsegaye & Xu, Yunan & Bruna, Natacha & Afewerk Demena, Binyam, 2022. "The value of so-called ‘failed’ large-scale land acquisitions," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    4. Sarah Ruth Sippel, 2023. "Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’: the interplay of imaginaries, data and digital technologies within farmland assetization," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 849-863, September.
    5. Stefan Ouma, 2020. "This can(’t) be an asset class: The world of money management, “society†, and the contested morality of farmland investments," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(1), pages 66-87, February.
    6. Michaela Böhme, 2021. "‘Milk from the purest place on earth’: examining Chinese investments in the Australian dairy sector," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(1), pages 327-338, February.
    7. Madeleine Fairbairn & Jim LaChance & Kathryn Teigen De Master & Loka Ashwood, 2021. "In vino veritas, in aqua lucrum: Farmland investment, environmental uncertainty, and groundwater access in California’s Cuyama Valley," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(1), pages 285-299, February.
    8. Justyna Agnieszka Franc-Dabrowskaa, 2019. "Crawling financialization in Central and Eastern Europe using the example of Agriculture," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 21(3), pages 677-696.
    9. Sarah Ruth Sippel & Oane Visser, 2021. "Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(1), pages 271-282, February.
    10. Verena Brinks, 2016. "Situated affect and collective meaning: A community perspective on processes of value creation and commercialization in enthusiast-driven fields," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(6), pages 1152-1169, June.
    11. Hall, Stephen & Foxon, Timothy J., 2014. "Values in the Smart Grid: The co-evolving political economy of smart distribution," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 600-609.
    12. Fran Tonkiss, 2015. "Afterword: Economies of infrastructure," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2-3), pages 384-391, June.
    13. Botterill, Linda Courtenay & Chapman, Bruce & Kelly, Simon, 2017. "Revisiting revenue contingent loans for drought relief: government as risk manager," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 61(3), July.
    14. Tonkiss, Fran, 2015. "Afterword: economies of infrastructure," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86717, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Beckert, Jens, 2011. "Where do prices come from? Sociological approaches to price formation," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    16. Dimitar Anguelov, 2024. "State‐owned Enterprises and the Politics of Financializing Infrastructure Development in Indonesia: De‐risking at the Limit?," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 55(3), pages 493-529, May.
    17. Hanna Hilbrandt & Monika Grubbauer, 2020. "Standards and SSOs in the contested widening and deepening of financial markets: The arrival of Green Municipal Bonds in Mexico City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(7), pages 1415-1433, October.
    18. Helena Shilomboleni, 2020. "Political economy challenges for climate smart agriculture in Africa," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1195-1206, December.
    19. repec:grz:wpsses:2017-04 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Kate Gasparro & Ashby Monk, 2020. "Demystifying “localness†of infrastructure assets: Crowdfunders as local intermediaries for global investors," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(5), pages 878-897, August.
    21. Schiller-Merkens, Simone, 2013. "Framing moral markets: The cultural legacy of social movements in an emerging market category," MPIfG Discussion Paper 13/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:50:y:2018:i:3:p:549-568. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.