ABSTRACT
The growing role of financial actors, institutions, and motives in activities all across the food system deeply impacts sustainable diets. We examine the ways that financialisation influences sustainable diets through the lenses of capital accumulation, daily life, and prioritisation of shareholder value. We highlight how pressures to maximise financial returns compromise the socio-ecological viability of food provisioning. Greater financialisation encourages the intensification of industrial agriculture and tends to marginalise smaller scale sustainable production and distribution systems. Moreover, as finance plays a greater role in people’s daily activities around food provisioning, consumers are encouraged to choose foods from within the industrial food system. Given the impacts of these structural forces, we emphasise the need for public policy and collective action to ensure more sustainable diets, rather than solely viewing them as an individual responsibility.
