S3E3: Farms for sale: what's wrong with the financialization of farmland?—w/ Dr. Madeleine Fairbairn

Farmland has transformed into a financial asset class. So, what happens when land is owned by large financial institutions? How does it impact farmer autonomy? And could it be good for fighting climate change?

Dr. Madeleine Fairbairn is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz and author of Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Dr. Fairbairn joins Ross and guest cohost Dr. Lauren Gifford to discuss the emergence of the institutional farmland investments industry and describe how land has value independent of what it produces.

Dr. Fairbairn explores what’s behind the steep decline in the number of farmers over the last century and explains how large-scale farmland ownership could have positive consequences for the environment and negative social consequences at the same time. Listen in for Dr. Fairbairn’s insights into Georgism as a potential policy response and find out what the financialization of farmland means for the small farmer, the economy and the climate.

Key Takeaways

[1:40] How Fields of Gold explores the emergence of the institutional farmland investments industry

[5:24] What Dr. Fairbairn means by ‘the financialization of land’

[9:25] The non-linear progression from communal forms of land ownership to a more and more sophisticated commodification of land

[11:51] How land has value independent of what it produces

[13:52] What’s behind the decline in the number of farmers over the last century

[18:01] The connections between the financialization of farmland and climate (and how what we ask of farmland managers is changing)

[21:12] How large-scale farmland ownership could have positive environmental consequences and negative social consequences at the same time

[26:18] How landowners in Brazil are tasked with serving society as a whole

[30:31] How Dr. Fairbairn thinks about billionaires like Bill Gates acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres of land

[34:03] Dr. Fairbairn’s take on a Georgist land value tax as a potential policy response

[40:03] The relationship between Georgism and the politics of productivity

[42:37] What Dr. Fairbairn is learning about agri-food technology through the UC AFTeR Project she’s working on now

Resources

Dr. Fairbairn at UC Santa Cruz

Dr. Fairbairn on Twitter

Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush by Madeleine Fairbairn

Dr. Lauren Gifford

USDA Discrimination Lawsuits

‘Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner’ in The Land Report

Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West by Justin Farrell

The Mason Gaffney Reader: Essays on Solving the ‘Unsolvable’ by Mason Gaffney

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl