Agribusiness rent extraction

The article discusses the political-economy of agribusiness, making use of the category of rent that is considered as a proportion of exchange value diverted from production for the payment to the landowners and, crucially, its class-based allies. Rent is therefore more than just the extraction of value from the use of land, but there is a wider, deeply politicised capture of value from the network of relations that maintain land in production. Agribusiness rent primarily derives from the appropriation of land through the formation of a powerful network involving ‘state-landowners-private agroindustrial sector’, and this network provides the necessary conditions for the extraction of rent and the accumulation of capital.