Jennifer Clapp discusses the implications of financialization in the worldwide food system.

Length: 1:12:21
Uploaded: 21 Jan, 2013

Recording Date: 17 Jan, 2013
Recording Location: Queen's University Kingston, ON
Logsheet: none
Language: English
Topical for: Timeless
Status: Raw, unedited
Copyright:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Program Title: The Financialization of Food
Description: In this talk, Jennifer Clapp unpacks the implications of financialization in the food system. She looks at the forces and actors involved in the financial investment in agriculture, how financialization manifests and with what impact for global hunger and the environment. She argues that financialization has given new actors - financial investors, including banks, financial services arms of agricultural trading firms, and large-scale institutional investors - greater influence over outcomes in the food system. There are two important implications of this development. First, a new kind of 'distancing' has emerged within the food system whereby financialization increases the number of the actors and the steps involved in global agrifood commodity chains while at the same time it abstracts food from its physical form into highly complex agricultural commodity 'derivatives' that are largely opaque to the general public. Second, because food-related financial transactions take place largely outside of public view, the 'real world' physical implications of increased investment are not always transparent to the outside observer or even to the investors themselves. While these investments may be only 'virtual' for financial investors, they generate a number external costs that have a real influence on the world's poorest people and the natural environment.

Host(s): CFRC 101.9FM
Featured Speakers/Guests: Jennifer Clapp

Credits: Recorded and Edited by Brendon Wilson

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