\u2018Milk from the purest place on earth\u2019: examining Chinese investments in the Australian dairy sector

Michaela Böhme

doi:10.1007/s10460-020-10153-2

Abstract

This article explores the emerging intersections between the shift towards higher quality food consumption in China and Chinese investment in overseas farmland. Based on an ethnographic study of a Chinese company acquiring one of Australia’s largest dairy farms, the article argues that the linkage between imported Australian milk and perceptions of safety and quality has served as a powerful driver of Chinese investment in overseas farmland—a linkage that has largely been overlooked by literature on China’s role in the global land rush. Drawing on the notion of ‘quality imaginaries’, the paper shows how images of Australian farmland as natural, pure, and geographically isolated have been mobilized by the investor company to position itself as provider of fresh, premium milk in the Chinese market. While such place-based qualities constitute a prized advantage, ironically, they also present a looming risk as the investor company struggles to reconcile fresh milk’s perishability with the farm’s location at the ‘edge of the world’. Thus, the case study not only demonstrates how cultural meanings tied to food and eating shape the ways in which investors imagine land’s affordances and possibilities but also draws attention to land’s materiality as a factor that both facilitates and destabilizes investment in farmland.

Highlights

In recent years, agro-industrial transformations in China’s food sector have produced increasing uncertainties about food and a ‘crisis of trust’ in domestically grown food products (Hanser and Li 2015; Klein 2013; Yan 2012)
The paper argues that imaginaries of Australian farmland as natural and pure are being mobilized as key devices by investors to enhance perceptions of food quality and safety and, increase the profits investors can generate from the sale and export of foods produced in Australia
Others have examined the rhetorical and ideological dimensions of farmland investment, i.e., how investors legitimize and rationalize investment in farmland through, for example, discourses of foodsecurity (Larder et al 2015), notions of soil fertility (Visser 2017), or moral belief systems that define which investments are deemed ‘good’ and which ones are deemed ‘bad’ (Sippel 2018). Building on this body of literature, this present paper examines the intersections between farmland investments and the cultural and symbolic meanings of food quality—a dimension that has so far been underexamined in research on how farmland has been reconfigured into a target for investment

Summary

Introduction

Agro-industrial transformations in China’s food sector have produced increasing uncertainties about food and a ‘crisis of trust’ in domestically grown food products (Hanser and Li 2015; Klein 2013; Yan 2012). Taking the food safety crisis in China as a starting point, the paper highlights how investors construct, shape, and heighten specific locational and environmental characteristics of Australian farmland to appeal to Chinese quality imaginaries that associate food quality with naturalness and purity of the farming environment. Perspectives from economic sociology and geography on how food commodities within an agri-food system become known as ‘quality’ offer a useful framework for studying the imaginaries underpinning Chinese investor interest in Australian farmland This literature starts from a straightforward point of departure: a crisis of confidence in the quality and safety of mass-produced ‘placeless and faceless foods’ is driving consumers, and those with higher incomes, to opt out from mainstream agro-industrial systems and search for alternative channels of high-quality food provisioning (Goodman 2010). As the sections demonstrate, these images are incorporated and mobilized as key devices in the strategies of Chinese investors acquiring Australian farmland

A Chinese manufacturer turned dairy farmer

Findings

Conclusion