Uncertain hog futures

Life, Death, and Arbitrage on the Factory Farm

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2181600
AutoresJan Dutkiewicz (0000-0003-3835-689X, Johns Hopkins University, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume13
Fascículo3
Páginas278-289
Data de publicação2020-05-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2019.1574864
OpenAlexW2946701696
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas53

Between 2013 and 2014, PED virus (PEDv) swept through American pig farms, killing millions of animals and causing a market panic that drove the prices of both physical pork and lean hog futures to all-time highs. However, a divergence between pricing in financial markets and on-farm realities allowed some producers to reap record profits via a unique form of biological arbitrage. This arbitrage was novel in that it allowed for an underlier (pigs) to be used to profit from fluctuations in the price of a derivative (lean hog futures). This article explores the case of PEDv to examine the entanglements and divergences between ‘real’ and ‘abstract’ values in financialized industries, paying particular attention to the schisms between the imaginaries and practices of actors in the financial and tangibly productive links of the agricultural value chain. To do so, it examines the historical co-constitution of American agriculture and the financial sector, and shows how in the contemporary moment these two ever-more-intertwined sectors are nonetheless marked by important differences. It argues that the nature of agricultural production can confound the expectations of finance, and highlights the fact that financialization entails contextually-specific practices that can lead to uneven and unexpected market outcomes

Agriculture · Arbitrage · Business · Economics · Financial economics · Financialization · Futures contract · Market economy · Neoclassical economics · Profit (economics · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Political Economy and Marxism