Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Partners Asset Management in Chicago - managing a hedge fund for natural
resources).
• 'The world is asking for more food, more energy. You see a huge demand …
What this new investment will buy is new tehnology. We will be helping to
accelerate the development of infrastructure, and the consumer will benefit
because there will be more supply' (Axel Hinsh, CEO of Calyx Agro, a di-
vision of Louis Dreyfus Commodities, owning tens of thousands of acres of
cropland in Brazil, baked by large institutional investors, like AIG).
• Susan Payne, founder and CEO of Emergent Asset Management (UK), whih
is raising $450-750 million for investment to consolidate and industrialize
farmland in sub-Saharan Africa, for food and biofuels (jatropha): 'We are
getting strong response from institutional investors - pensions, insurance
companies, endowments, some sovereign wealth funds.' The fund selected
Africa because 'land values are very, very inexpensive, compared to other
agriculture-based economies. Its microclimates are enticing, allowing a range
of different crops. There's accessible labour. And there's good logistics - wide
open roads, good truk transport, sea transport.'
The profitability crisis for industrial agriculture is two-sided: it refers to the declining
biophysical productivity of industrial agriculture - for example, the drop in effi-
ciency of nitrogen use from 60 to 20 per cent from the 1950s to the 1990s (Van der
Ploeg, 2010, p100) and loss of biodiversity and crucial 'ecosystem services' suh as
pollination and soil formation (Weis, 2010, p316); and to the atempts at 'biophysical
override', as capital compensates by deepening the commodification of production
(Weis, 2007). Both trends drive agro-capital offshore to appropriate Southern lands.
This relocation of investment is compounded by anticipation of risk evident in cli-
mate hange.
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While muh has been made of the productivity gains associated with agro-in-
dustrialization via the green revolution, for example, it has evidently run its course
as its 'external' costs rise - notably pest resistance, soil erosion, water table deple-
tion and farmer debt (Sharma, 2004; Zwerdling, 2009), and rising use of energy and
irrigation water with declining efficiency of use (van der Ploeg, 2010, p100). That re-
