In Speculative Harvests, Clapp and Isakson investigate the evolving
relationship between the agrifood and financial sectors, paying
particular attention to how the contemporary process of financialization
is reshaping agrarian development and food systems. Understood as the
growing prevalence of financial actors, markets, motives and profits in
an economy, financialization is a defining feature of modern-day
capitalism that is reconfiguring the distribution of wealth and economic
power in a variety of contexts across the globe. In a clear and
accessible manner, Clapp and Isakson explain the character and
ramifications of these changes for the world food economy and
systematically detail how different elements of agrifood provisioning --
including commodity trading, farmland tenure, the management of
agricultural risk, and food trading, processing, and retailing -- have
been reconfigured for financial purposes.
Clapp and Isakson highlight the importance of confronting the
financialization of food and agriculture, identify the challenges of
conventional approaches to food system reform and consider innovative
alternatives. Speculative Harvests is essential reading for food
scholars and activists who not only seek a better understanding of the
problems inherent to the contemporary food system but also are also in
search of effective interventions towards its positive transformation.
