The financialization of food and the 2008–2011 food price spikes

The treatment of recent global food price volatility in the neoclassical academic literature is problematic in its limited conceptual and empirical scope. This study presents new empirical data and analysis linking financial speculation by index swap dealers (‘index funds’) with US and global food price volatility. Marxian circuits of capital are used to illustrate the connection between index funds and food consumers. The findings show that financial speculation by index swap dealers and hedge funds significantly contributed to the price volatility of food commodities between June 2006 and December 2014. The key conceptual contribution is that it articulates geographical economic interpretation of food price volatility and financial speculation in a literature awash with neoclassical economic analyses.