Farming as a Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes : A Commentary.

Abstract

This book by Stefan Ouma presents a rich diversity of themes with compelling new insights into past theories, arguments, and proposals for a new conceptualization and understanding of the making of institutional landscapes. Due to this diversity—which is complicated by geographical, historical, and current contextual factors—the findings and conclusions provide new entry points to the student of radical political economy. It provides a break from the atemporal treatment of capital in agriculture in the land-grab literature by tracing the roots of capital in agriculture with a careful historical and disaggregated spatial context. The book uses Tanzania and Aotearoa New Zealand to make a case for spatial differentiation. It is a refreshing volume that disrupts old narratives on the workings of finance in agriculture by offering rich empirical material and evidence. The author argues succinctly and clearly, using refined historical, conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives in showing how “finance goes farming.” The data for this book emanates from serious global fieldwork across three continents with perspectives from other continents where different forms of finance operate in creating institutional landscapes. It extends our knowledge on global capital and agricultural development beyond the current the discourses. The author presents different lenses through which we can view “reality” in diverse contexts, especially through the lenses of capital itself, rather than only through the theoretical deductions and representations of affected social classes.