Financialization, agriculture and food dependency: the case of Colombia

Abstract

The higher influence of finance has impacted agriculture and food production due to the progressive adaptation of speculative rationality to food systems and institutional structures in an economic framework supported in commercial and financial liberalization. The article reflects on the impacts of financialization on agriculture in peripheral countries, taking the Colombian case as an example. The analysis shows how financialization has been adapted to the characteristics of the agrarian structure. This combined effect of financialization with the persistence of historical-structural factors that support the autonomous process of capital accumulation in peripheral countries, allows to characterize a phenomenon of food dependency that is added to other elements of subordination in the international division of labor. Finally, the article reflects on some determinants that would intensify the speculative rationality in agriculture in peripheral countries, in particular climate change, demographic trends and the economic growth of emerging powers are mentioned.