The recent global boom in agricultural investment has spurred much normative critique of “land grabbing,” but amidst this critical scrutiny investor morality has remained a black box. This article examines the role of ethical narratives in advancing the financialization of nature by comparing how agricultural investment projects are pitched and implemented among two different groups of investors: mainstream agricultural investors and impact investors. We analyze the different discursive strategies used by these distinct financial communities to position themselves as ethical investor-subjects while also showing that, within both groups, some form of moral performance is necessary to maintaining legitimacy and profitability. Mainstream agricultural investors, we argue, perform morality primarily through economic and agricultural productivity, while explicit claims of socially or environmentally responsible investing serve mostly to mitigate reputational risk and preempt the value destruction of potential bad publicity. For impact investors, on the other hand, moral storytelling is essential to value generation. Their solicitation of capital involves persuading potential investors of both the value of their individual projects and the ethical framework guiding the entire sector. Finally, we present two case studies—a large-scale farmland acquisition in Mozambique and an impact investment farming project in Ghana—which demonstrate how moral performances can falter when put into practice. These case studies shed light on the co-creation of economic and moral value in markets by demonstrating how—beyond formal evaluative metrics—the everyday moral narratives of investors play a pivotal role in expanding the financial penetration of nature.

Amid public critiques of Wall Street's amorality and protests against sharpening inequality since the financial crisis of 2008, the emergent discourse of philanthrocapitalism -philanthropic capitalism -has sought to recuperate a moral centre for finance capitalism. Philanthrocapitalism seeks to marry finance capital with a moral commitment to do good. These strategies require new financial instruments to make poverty reduction and other forms of social welfare profitable business ventures. Social impact bonds (SIBs) -which offer private investors competitive returns on public sector investments -and related instruments have galvanized the financialization of both public services and the life possibilities of poor communities in the USA and the Global South. This article maps new intrusions of credit and debt into previously unmarketable spheres of life, such as prison recidivism outcomes, and argues that contemporary social finance practices such as SIBs are inextricable from histories of race -that financialization has been and continues to be a deeply racialized process. Intervening in debates about the social life of financial practices and the coercive creation of new debtor publics, we chart technologies meant to transform subjects considered valueless into appropriate, even laudable, objects of financial investment. Because their proponents frame SIBs as philanthropic endeavours, the violence required to financialize human life becomes obfuscated. We aim to historicize the violence of financialization by drawing out links between financial capitalism as it developed during the height of the Atlantic slave trade and the more subtle violence of philanthropic financial capitalism. Though the notion that slaves could be a good investment -both in the profitable and moral sense of the word -seems far removed from our contemporary sensibilities, the shadow of slavery haunts SIBs; despite their many differences, both required black bodies to be made available for investment. Both also represent an expansion to the limits of financialization.

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