Political Economy Commons^™

‘Capitalism A Nuh’ Wi Frien’. The Formatting Of Farming Into An Asset, From Financial Speculation To International Aid, Luigi Russi, Tomaso Ferrando

Luigi Russi

This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency. The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products. We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel …