Farming as Financial Asset. Stefan Ouma

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Farming as Financial Asset - Stefan Ouma


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(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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