Financiarización agrícola en Colombia, acaparamiento de tierras y alteración de los precios como efectos de la especulación

Abstract

The agricultural financing process in Colombia has been marked by global dynamics in the key of different historical phases, beginning with the protectionist policy of developed countries, mainly the United States, conducive to using the practice of dumping prices through a strong offer of subsidies. public to their productions in order to modify world agricultural production.

The result in Colombia is evident in the proliferation of permanent monoculture crops, the incursion into the production of biofuels and the consequent grabbing of frontier land with speculative fines. Within the framework of this new dynamic of surgical production, the dominance of agribusiness companies, accumulating control in the supply of goods and supplies throughout the global agri-food chain.

At the dawn of the financial crash of 2008, the desire of investors to find safer markets given the bubble burst, unleashed an exuberance that led to an unusual increase in their investments in land, agricultural raw materials and agrofuels, this interest increased fueled by the biofuel boom and the proliferation of financial instruments in the futures stock markets. The new dynamics of financial investment denote the interest of financial capital to capture income from other notions of capitalist production related to the generation of value, the practice that determines that interest is that of land grabbing framed in a phenomenon that various authors have known fever land This is explained in the Ricardian theory of differential and potential income, and the later Marxist theory of absolute income, given that land quality and productivity and potential rents intervene, among others, in land price changes. , which depends on your waiting time when changes in use and investments occur. In this way, the hoarding is made explicit that, in addition to being a vehicle for speculation, it is itself a mechanism of power and control, since it is a form of speculation that depends on the expectations generated by public policies for what is considered to have strong political incidence and involves power relations. The consequences of speculative movements are explained in the exacerbated modification of prices in the market, usually through phenomena of inflationary bubbles, a situation that is exacerbated by the high concentration index of property in Colombia. Thus, land rent as a productive factor becomes a serious obstacle to rural development, profitability and the competitiveness of the sector, increasingly pulling agricultural investment towards the production of products and biofuels and moving it away from the production of food, undermining the principles of food sovereignty. In Colombia, in accordance with the global trend of the land fever, led by the IMF, successive governments have presented the Orinoquía as a destination for large investments, generating huge expectations of land valuation due to, among others, the strong investment in infrastructure works especially in the road component. The greatest obstacle to agroindustrial expansion in the Altillanura and the stability and legal security of investments are the prohibitions of Law 160 of 1994 for Family Agricultural Units and the acquisition of public land, even so, the opportunity cost reveals a greater incentive to investment despite legal insecurity, a fact that is constant in the acquisitions of large areas of land by the financial conglomerate Grupo Aval, investments that have obtained a valuation of 534% in a span of 8 years.

Thus, the financing of land precedes the consolidation of a process of rentier and speculative economic dominance that is introduced with increasing force and speed in all aspects of the national economy. In Colombia, speculation has been developed through hoarding processes with apparent effects on land prices, and a subsequent phase of speculation is beginning to be seen through financial instruments through the adaptation of the capital market.