Neoliberalism and the Financialization of Agriculture

Chapter 2 explores the progressive financialization of the food system since the 1980s and relates this phenomenon to the Neoliberal policy agenda. In addition, the chapter carries out some important theoretical work that informs the analysis throughout the remainder of the book. The author argues that the financialization of the food system can only be understood in the context of broader trends in the financialization of the global economy, which has to be linked to the Neoliberal policy agenda and its relationship to Neoclassical economic theory in order to be fully appreciated. The chapter analyses three additional developments that, together with practices of food commodity speculation, are significant in the financialization of agriculture: the growing importance of finance in shaping the operations of global value chains; the global land grab that has seen financial investors gaining control over large tracts of agricultural land; and the rise of microcredit as a mechanism that is incorporating populations in the Global South into the logics of financial markets.