State-Led and Finance-Backed Farming Endeavours: Changing Contours of Investment in Australian Agriculture

Abstract

Since the conjunction of food, energy, and financial crises of 2007/8 there has been a discernible shift in the sources of foreign capital inflows in Australian agriculture with the emergence of new state-led and finance-backed actors. While finance capital has been looking to move away from uncertain markets in urban real estate, and other less-profitable commodity portfolios, to seek longer-term stable returns from farmland investment, state-led actors have come to represent increasingly important investment sources, pursuing objectives such as food security. The changing contours of investment reveal how projections about the development of global food (in)security are closely linked to the involvement of new financial players such as pension funds, as well as the intensified engagement of "traditional" actors, such as states, which, at the same time, increasingly turn to financial vehicles for their investment. The new kinds and origins of capital channelled into agriculture and food reverse patterns of capital flows in the global food system while underlining the persisting strategic importance of food.