Redefining land’s investability: towards a neo-nationalization of resources in Australia?

Sippel, Sarah Ruth; Weldon, Timothy

doi:10.1080/21622671.2019.1703797

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In this way, Ouma's and Fairbairn's accounts further corroborate what I recently conceptualized as the endogenous role of the state within land's investability (Sippel & Weldon, 2021). That is to say, the state not only sets the rules for, oversees, and approves investments in land.…”

Section: Key Contributionssupporting

confidence: 72%

“…That is to say, the state not only sets the rules for, oversees, and approves investments in land. It also navigates conflicting interests over capital accumulation from land, mediates public debates over land, and is the main provider of knowledge about land—and all this within what could be considered a process of ‘neo‐nationalization’, which combines neoliberal governance practices with national (security) interests in new ways (Sippel & Weldon, 2021, pp. 318–319).…”

Section: Key Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Historical grounding, political contexts, material hurdles: Towards more in‐depth understandings of ‘finance going farming’

Sippel

2021

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Two recently published books—Fairbairn's Fields of Gold and Ouma's Farming as a Financial Asset—now provide the first extensive investigations into finance's engagement with farmland. Both books set out to understand finance's growing interest in farmland from the perspective of the financial actors involved, and inquire how, why, and with what kind of challenges ‘finance has been going farming.’ This review essay discusses the two books in the context of the ‘land rush’ literature. It outlines how they contribute to an advanced understanding of the financialization of farmland in three ways, by (i) embedding finance‐farmland intersections historically; (ii) scrutinizing the role of the state within financial farmland investments; and (iii) exploring the hurdles involved in ‘marrying’ finance with farmland. I then critically reflect on the areas that have not been covered by the authors. Critical agrarian studies need to investigate how financialization intersects with the digitization of agriculture, examine life expectancies and afterlives of financialized farms, further ground financial investment in concrete rural spaces, and explore individual motivations and belief systems of its proponents more seriously.

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Section: Key Contributionssupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Key Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical grounding, political contexts, material hurdles: Towards more in‐depth understandings of ‘finance going farming’

Sippel

2021

Journal of Agrarian Change

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“…Yet, such trends are still uneven in their strength, pace, and sometimes direction. Looking closer at concrete regions and localities we find 'sluggish commodification', disappointed farmland investors and failed investments (Magnan 2015;Kuns et al 2016;Visser 2017); contestations and renegotiations of land's 'investability' and assetization (Ouma 2020;Sippel and Weldon 2020); and agricultural frontiers that have turned into 'frontiers in ruins' (Münster 2017). As Crowley and Carter (2000) argued for western Kenya, agrarian change comprises complicated and contrasting trends, some of which are more obvious than others, and thus always needs to be understood as a 'heterogeneity' and a 'patterning or patchiness' (Crowley and Carter 2000, p. 385).…”

Section: Trajectories Of Land Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

Sippel

Виссер

2020

Agric Hum Values

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Over the past decade land has again moved to the centre of resource conflicts, agrarian struggles, and competing visions over the future of food and farming. This renewed interest in land necessitates asking the seemingly simple, but pertinent, question ‘what is land?’ To reach a more profound understanding of the uniqueness of land, and what distinguishes land from other resources, this symposium suggests the notion of ‘land imaginaries’ as a crucial lens in the study of current land transformations. Political-economy, and the particular economic, financial, or political interests of various actors involved in land projects do not directly result in, or translate into, outcomes, such as dispossession and enclosure, increased commodification, financialization, and assetization, or mobilization and resistance. All these processes are informed by different imaginaries of land—the underlying understandings, views, and visions of what land is, can, and should be—and associated visions, hopes, and dreams regarding land. Drawing on a variety of case studies from across the world, crossing Global North/South and East/West, and including contemporary and historical instances of land transformation, this symposium addresses the multifaceted ways in which implicit, explicit, and emergent understandings of land shape current land transformations.

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“…In the first two cases, contestations over large-scale and/or foreign agricultural land acquisitions have led to a reinvigoration of the national significance of land with states altering their legal frameworks for the acquisition of land by foreigners or by corporate actors (e.g., Fairbairn, 2015;Desmarais et al, 2017;Sippel and Weldon, 2020). Cases from Australia and Japan demonstrate how the state, facing pressure from civil society groups to address increased land acquisitions and concerns over food security, may leverage legal, and cultural norms of property to legitimize their control over the resources that drive agricultural production.…”

Section: Toward a Land Logics Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Between 2010 and 2015, the Australian government revised its legal regime with regards to foreign investment in Australian farmland (Sippel and Weldon, 2020). This revision was both part and result of a broader public debate surrounding what some considered to be the "selling out" of Australian farmland to foreigners.…”

Section: International Vignettes-centering Property Regimes In Land Food Nexus Analysis Australia-a Reinforced Neo-nationalization and Fimentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving Food System Resilience Requires Challenging Dominant Land Property Regimes

Calo

McKee

Perrin

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Although evidence continues to indicate an urgent need to transition food systems away from industrialized monocultures and toward agroecological production, there is little sign of significant policy commitment toward food system transformation in global North geographies. The authors, a consortium of researchers studying the land-food nexus in global North geographies, argue that a key lock-in explaining the lack of reform arises from how most food system interventions work through dominant logics of property to achieve their goals of agroecological production. Doing so fails to recognize how land tenure systems, codified by law and performed by society, construct agricultural land use outcomes. In this perspective, the authors argue that achieving food system “resilience” requires urgent attention to the underlying property norms that drive land access regimes, especially where norms of property appear hegemonic. This paper first reviews research from political ecology, critical property law, and human geography to show how entrenched property relations in the global North frustrate the advancement of alternative models like food sovereignty and agroecology, and work to mediate acceptable forms of “sustainable agriculture.” Drawing on emerging cases of land tenure reform from the authors' collective experience working in Scotland, France, Australia, Canada, and Japan, we next observe how contesting dominant logics of property creates space to forge deep and equitable food system transformation. Equally, these cases demonstrate how powerful actors in the food system attempt to leverage legal and cultural norms of property to legitimize their control over the resources that drive agricultural production. Our formulation suggests that visions for food system “resilience” must embrace the reform of property relations as much as it does diversified farming practices. This work calls for a joint cultural and legal reimagination of our relation to land in places where property functions as an epistemic and apex entitlement.

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Redefining land’s investability: towards a neo-nationalization of resources in Australia?

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Historical grounding, political contexts, material hurdles: Towards more in‐depth understandings of ‘finance going farming’

Historical grounding, political contexts, material hurdles: Towards more in‐depth understandings of ‘finance going farming’

Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

Achieving Food System Resilience Requires Challenging Dominant Land Property Regimes

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