Farming as Financial Asset in the Context of Class Struggle: Pathways to Effective Progressive Strategies?

In Farming as Financial Asset (2020), Stefan Ouma sets out a detailed topography of attempts to meld the resolutely concrete rhythms of farming with the abstractions of financial mechanisms in contemporary capitalism. Using as case studies the agricultural sectors of Aotearoa New Zealand and Tanzania, Ouma constructs his account using seven years' worth of fieldwork data and careful caveating of what we simply cannot know due to the nature of the financial sector. The resulting text is impressive in its depth and breadth, though the decision to focus on the normative dimensions of these processes to the exclusion of a labor-focused lens may, I contend, lead to some difficulties in translating Ouma's findings to effective progressive strategies.