New Zealand Agriculture and Changes in the Agriculture—Finance Relation during the 1980s

Abstract

In the 1980s New Zealand agriculture was reinserted into the global economy by state policy which favoured global capital at the expense of other capital fractions. An important aspect to the latest internationalisation of agriculture are changes in the agriculture—finance relation, specifically the institutional arrangements through which capital is allocated to and appropriated from agriculture and agricultural processing. The developments in the agriculture—finance relation in the 1980s is outlined with a look especially at the state's retreat from lending to agriculture and new possibilities for corporate investment in land-based production. It is argued that the sale of the government agency, the Rural Banking and Finance Corporation (known as the Rural Bank) to New Zealand's largest listed corporation, Fletcher Challenge Ltd (a global corporation with extensive forestry and fishery interests in the Americas) is a development of major historical significance in the New Zealand context. The sale introduces the possibility of unified control over production, realisation, and reproduction spheres in New Zealand's agrocommodity chains. The paper ends with suggestions on the wider significance of the New Zealand development in the current international farm crisis.