What owns the land: the corporate organization of farmland investment

Loka Ashwood; John Canfield; Madeleine Fairbairn; Kathryn De Master

doi:10.1080/03066150.2020.1786813

What owns the land: the corporate organization of farmland investment

Loka Ashwood
, John Canfield
, Madeleine Fairbairn
, Kathryn De Master

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

Novel investment vehicles continue to dominate discussions of the financial entities driving the global land rush. However, less attention has been devoted to the mundane elements of such investment, primarily the corporate structure that undergirds it. Using US public records, our analysis reveals how absentee and complex corporate structures enable the financialization of farmland. While the latest farmland investment has the fresh face of the who, such as private equity funds, we conclude that the what of its corporate skeleton is older, calling for dialogue between studies of corporate organization, landownership, and financialization.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	233-262
Number of pages	30
Journal	Journal of Peasant Studies
Volume	49
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1786813
State	Published - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Funding

This work was supported by the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture under grant 2017-68006-26347; [U.S. Department of Agriculture]. Ashwood and Canfield shared first-author responsibilities for this paper and are listed alphabetically. The majority of the research and writing for this project was completed while Ashwood and Canfield were affiliated with Auburn University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. The reviewers played a formative role in the paper’s final form, and we thank them for their crucial insights.

Funders	Funder number
Auburn University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology
U.S. Department of Agriculture
US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative	2017-68006-26347

Keywords

Financialization
absentee ownership
corporations
investment
landownership
property

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cultural Studies
Anthropology
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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10.1080/03066150.2020.1786813

Cite this

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AB - Novel investment vehicles continue to dominate discussions of the financial entities driving the global land rush. However, less attention has been devoted to the mundane elements of such investment, primarily the corporate structure that undergirds it. Using US public records, our analysis reveals how absentee and complex corporate structures enable the financialization of farmland. While the latest farmland investment has the fresh face of the who, such as private equity funds, we conclude that the what of its corporate skeleton is older, calling for dialogue between studies of corporate organization, landownership, and financialization.

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KW - property

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What owns the land: the corporate organization of farmland investment

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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