Farming as Financial Asset. Stefan Ouma
Читать онлайн книгу.(as less direct forms of equity) have historically played in the making and remaking of agricultural landscapes in many parts of the world, particularly during imperial-colonial times. Moreover, during much of the twentieth century national governments around the world supported “agricultural transformation” via the provision of credit and mortgage schemes, often with tight links to both domestic and foreign sources of finance. Even the managed institutional investments in agriculture we have read so much about after the food and financial crises of 2007/8 have a surprisingly long history, as we shall see.
The historical examples discussed in this chapter show that we must carefully examine how current phases of “financialization” compare to earlier operations of finance capital formation in and through agriculture on a global scale. Yet, just because finance has had a long (but by no means straightforward) relationship with agriculture, it does not mean that there is not something new about finance’s run on all things agricultural. Eventually this chapter will do justice to this newness by outlining some of the novel features that characterize the contemporary financial economization of farming.
Frontiers into assets: imperial landscapes and the quite early globalization of finance
In agricultural economics, assets are conventionally defined as all the wealth that is at the disposal of a farmer. But, in many cases, there is a hidden story to that wealth, a history of appropriation, enclosure and transformation, and, historically, “finance” has played a significant role in that story. Indeed, a longue dureé perspective reveals that both private and public forms of finance were playing a crucial role in the production of capitalist agricultural landscapes from at least the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in different parts of the world (see Table 3.1). The colonial companies that turned indigenous territories in the regions of Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Indonesia, India, the United States, South Africa and Argentina (to name a few) – often classified as “empty”, “idle” or “underutilized” lands – into “imperial assets” had tight links to investors and stock exchanges in the colonial metropoles (Kocka 2013: 52). These companies usually acquired lands through a variety of means, including brute force.
Much of this land was held for speculation, but also for exploiting natural resources such as timber. Examples were the New Zealand Company, the Natal Land and Colonization Company in South Africa, the Mexican Land and Colonization Company and the Santa Fe Land Company in Argentina. In 1913 there were 130 British companies of this type holding 25 million hectares of land, largely in Africa and Latin America, but also in North America and Oceania. This compares with 746 companies that held 5.6 million hectares engaged directly in agriculture through plantations, and 40 companies that held 14.2 million hectares for ranching. A further 11 companies held 2.7 million hectares through railway concessions, most of which would eventually be sold off for settlement (Byerlee 2013: 23).
Table 3.1 Examples of territory occupied and main land use, 1650–1917
Approximate dates | Region | Latitude | Main usage in period | |||
1690–1830 | Cape Colony | 30–34° S | Grazing Pockets of viticulture | |||
1750–1820 | Old (US) Northwest | 38–41° N | Grazing Grain | |||
1750–1850 | Buenos Aires province | 35–40° S | Grazing | |||
1785–1860 | US public domain east of Great Plains and north of river Tennessee | 37–42° N | Mixed farming | |||
1785–1840 | US federal and state public domain in the south | 30–34° N | Grazing | |||
1785–1850 | Upper Canada | 42–45° N | Cotton Mixed farming | |||
1803–1830 | Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) | 41–43° S | Timber Mixed farming | |||
1788–1840 | South-eastern Australia | 27–38° S | Grazing | |||
1820–1850 | Texas | 26–32° N | Grazing Cotton | |||
1836–1860 | Boer republics and Natal | 23–30° S | Grazing | |||
1865–1890 | US West: high plains and Great Basin | 32–49° N | Grazing | |||
1846–1890 | California | 32–42° N | Grazing Grain | |||
1840–1860 | Aotearoa New Zealand | 36–46° S | Grazing | |||
1870–1914 | Canadian prairies | 49–54° N | Grain Minor grazing | |||
1890–1900 | Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) | 15–22° S | Grazing Tobacco Cotton | |||
1900–1914 | Highlands of Kenya | Equatorial |
Grazing
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