Social Science Agriculture & Food
Speculative Harvests
Financialization, Food, and Agriculture
- Publisher
- Fernwood Publishing
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2018
- Category
- Agriculture & Food
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781773630236
- Publish Date
- Apr 2018
- List Price
- $19.00
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Description
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.
About the authors
Jennifer Clapp is CIGI Research Chair in International Governance and a professor in the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo. Among her recent books are Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment (MIT Press) and Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance (MIT Press). She is co-editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics.
Marc Cohen is Humanitarian Researcher at Oxfam America. His research focuses on the links between humanitarian emergencies and climate change, protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict, and humanitarian assistance reform. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the international development program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
S. Ryan Isakson is an assistant professor of International Development Studies and Geography at the University of Toronto.
Other titles by
Titans of Industrial Agriculture
How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters
Hunger in the Balance
The New Politics of International Food Aid
Paths to a Green World, second edition
The Political Economy of the Global Environment
The Global Food Crisis
Governance Challenges and Opportunities
Toxic Exports
The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries