Antoine Ducastel

Global Strategies of Firms and the Financialization of Agriculture

A sustained growth of investment in the agricultural sector is being observed the world over. Some of these investment strategies, which rely on financial mechanisms such as private equity or shareholding structures, directly involve the financialization of agriculture. On the one hand, this financialization is a consequence of the new trends of globalization of the agricultural sector and value chains, more particularly of the need for capitalization and risk management. On the other hand, it in turn reshapes the sector and its value chains. The first part of this chapter intends to explore these dynamics by describing this process of financialization in practice based on two case studies, one in Africa and the other in Asia. The chapter then presents the drivers of financialization, its real spread into agriculture, as well as its implications in terms of integration and advanced verticalization, and of corporatization of agriculture. These dynamics form the basis for new issues concerning the structuring of the sector and its capacity to act towards sustainable development.