Journal für Entwicklungspolitik 2/2014

The trend of financialisation has affected various areas of nature and society. Agricultural products, forests, soil and whole landscapes have been commodified; related financial vehicles are traded on global financial markets. Financialisation causes socio-economic transformation, as well as changing actor constellations and social forces. Consequences like food crises, forced displacement and an increasing dependency on international capital show the necessity for a more profound understanding of financialisation processes. This special issue analyses the financialisation of food, land, and nature and its effects in different countries and areas, as well as its embeddedness in a long-term structural transformation of global capitalism. It contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the financialisation of food, land, and nature and explores new empirical cases, from the financialisation of farmland in Ukraine, to that of the food regime and land grabbing in Ethiopia, as well as of oil seed plantations in India, to the exploitation of the deep seabed.