ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on farmland, and the trade in non-agricultural and agricultural commodities as two major commodity domains-one considered to be a somewhat illiquid asset class with specific material and political properties, the other more liquid and less vulnerable to direct political contestation and regulation. Of the diverse group of investors targeting farmland and the agricultural commodity chain more broadly, it is particularly pension funds, and investment banks that have placed capital into trade with hard and soft commodities. The rise of financial interests in the commodity space is often associated with broader financialization trends in the global economy since the late 1970s. For both agricultural soft commodities and land, similar lines of criticism have emerged. The financialization of liquid commodity markets has significantly impacted the organization, geography, and dynamics of food chains. The transformative processes resulted in a twofold ‘structural dependence’ of New Zealand’s agricultural sector on specific commodities and export markets, as well as on private—and often overseas—capital.
