SPECULATIVE HARVESTS Financialization, Food, and Agriculture

• Main Authors: Clapp, Jennifer 1963- (Author), Isakson, S. Ryan 1972- (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Warwickshire, UK Practical Action Publishing 2018
• Series: Agrarian change and peasant studies series 8
• Subjects: Agriculture > Economic aspects; Food > Economic aspects; Financialization
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Physical Description: xiv, 182 pages illustrations 21 cm
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index
• ISBN: 9781853399930

In Speculative Harvests, Clapp and Isakson investigate the evolving relationship between the agrifood and financial sectors, paying particular attention to how the contemporary process of financialization is reshaping agrarian development and food systems. Understood as the growing prevalence of financial actors, markets, motives and profits in an economy, financialization is a defining feature of modern-day capitalism that is reconfiguring the distribution of wealth and economic power in a variety of contexts across the globe. In a clear and accessible manner, Clapp and Isakson explain the character and ramifications of these changes for the world food economy and systematically detail how different elements of agrifood provisioning -- including commodity trading, farmland tenure, the management of agricultural risk, and food trading, processing, and retailing -- have been reconfigured for financial purposes. Clapp and Isakson highlight the importance of confronting the financialization of food and agriculture, identify the challenges of conventional approaches to food system reform and consider innovative alternatives. Speculative Harvests is essential reading for food scholars and activists who not only seek a better understanding of the problems inherent to the contemporary food system but also are also in search of effective interventions towards its positive transformation.