Trading in the secretive commodity

Freidberg, Susanne

doi:10.1080/03085147.2017.1397359

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…A third group of scholars have studied traders and their power in global food systems using perspectives from geography , anthropology , rural sociology , and political economy . Freidberg (2017a, 2017b, 2019) examines the largest traders of corn, wheat, and soy (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, collectively referred to as “the ABCD companies”) as providers of data for sustainability initiatives, and critically questions what knowledge they have access to and power over. She engages agnotology (the study of ignorance), science and technology studies (STS), and agrarian history to explore how “the loss or neglect of certain types of knowledge has shaped the development of the industrialized agro‐food system” (Freidberg, 2017a, p. 500) and limits the likely success of sustainable sourcing strategies.…”

Section: Theoretical and Empirical Antecedentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Freidberg (2017a, 2017b, 2019) examines the largest traders of corn, wheat, and soy (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, collectively referred to as “the ABCD companies”) as providers of data for sustainability initiatives, and critically questions what knowledge they have access to and power over. She engages agnotology (the study of ignorance), science and technology studies (STS), and agrarian history to explore how “the loss or neglect of certain types of knowledge has shaped the development of the industrialized agro‐food system” (Freidberg, 2017a, p. 500) and limits the likely success of sustainable sourcing strategies. Newman (2009); Murphy, Burch, and Clapp (2012); Clapp (2014); and Salerno (2014, 2017) examine how the financialization of commodity trading and unique information and insights available to physical traders has lent large‐scale agro‐commodity firms greater power in supply chains and allowed them to reap profits even in times of crisis.…”

Section: Theoretical and Empirical Antecedentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order for agricultural commodity trading to be a profitable business, traders invest significantly in intelligence gathering, infrastructure development, and service provision. These nontrading activities include collecting fine‐grained data on the ground regarding current and expected production volumes in order to better anticipate supply‐demand relations (Freidberg, 2017a). Traders also often invest in storage infrastructure to accumulate sufficient volumes of goods to ship.…”

Section: Traders: a Specific But Diverse Set Of Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Traders as sustainability governance actors in global food supply chains: A research agenda

Grabs

Carodenuto

2021

Bus Strat Env

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Corporate actors are rapidly gaining ground as nontraditional forms of authority that shape sustainability governance efforts in global food supply chains. This paper highlights the critical, but underresearched role of traders—companies whose core business lies in the movement and exchange of agricultural commodities between producers and manufacturers—in linking corporate sustainability ambitions to on‐the‐ground impacts. Drawing on a systematic analysis of the major transnational corporations trading cocoa, coffee, and palm oil, we present advantages and potential pitfalls of relying on traders as implementers of sustainability governance and outline a future research agenda that focuses on producer‐level impacts, changes in supply chain organization and power dynamics, and traders' interactions with state and other nonstate actors. At the intersection of supply chain management, political economy, geography, and global governance, research on traders as key sustainability governance actors also provides novel opportunities for interdisciplinary work and stakeholder engagement.

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Section: Theoretical and Empirical Antecedentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical and Empirical Antecedentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Traders: a Specific But Diverse Set Of Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Traders as sustainability governance actors in global food supply chains: A research agenda

Grabs

Carodenuto

2021

Bus Strat Env

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“…And in South America, an apparent strategic ignorance about the provenance of the oilseeds and grains that they process has long been exhibited by major agricultural traders to distance themselves from responsibility for deforestation and human rights abuses. Although such knowledge limitations could be overcome through more robust tracing practices, this would be costly and thereby militate against shareholder value priorities (Freidberg, 2017). Table 2 teases out some of the implications of shareholder value advancement for company acquisitions policy by presenting the number of firms in which the ten commodity traders acquired 50% or more of equity in five-year periods from 1990 to 2019.…”

Section: Mapping Financialization Of the Commodity Trading Firms (Ii)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Commodity traders in a storm: financialization, corporate power and ecological crisis

Baines

Hager

2021

Review of International Political Economy

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Commodity trading firms occupy a central position in global supply chains and their activities have been associated with financial instability, social upheaval and manifold forms of ecological devastation. This paper examines these companies in the context of debates regarding corporate financialization. We find that since the 2003-2011 commodity boom, trading firms have become less financialized in terms of the source of their profits as they have shifted away from financial activities. However, they have become more financialized in terms of the destination of profits, with dividend and share repurchase commitments reaching new heights after 2015. In view of this finding, we inquire into whether trading firms' growing commitment to shareholder payouts will encourage them to continue to prioritize short-term returns, or whether instead these firms' linkages to financial markets will lend clout to financial activists concerned by the long-term environmental and social consequences of their operations. Ultimately, we find several sources of commodity trader resilience which insulate them from shareholder resolutions and divestment campaigns aimed at curbing ecological destruction and human rights abuses in their supply chains. We accordingly suggest that pressures from activist investors must be complemented with more wide-ranging efforts to defend living systems across the planet.

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“…First, expense: brands’ cost structures assume that raw materials can be sourced through markets made “efficient” partly by traders’ minimal information needs, and the flexibility this allows (Cronon 1991, chap. 4; Freidberg 2017). Companies that want to know and control more about raw material production typically must also pay more.…”

Section: Technologies and Contingencies Of Supply Chain Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“Unable to Determine”: Limits to Metrical Governance in Agricultural Supply chains

Freidberg

2019

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Metrics have long served as tools for governing at a distance. In the food industry, major manufacturers have embraced metrics as tools to govern the sustainability of the farms producing their commodity raw materials. This metrical turn has been influenced but also complicated by agricultural datafication, that is, the increasing quantities of data generated on and about farms. Despite the sheer abundance of data that companies might use to measure and drive improvement in on-farm sustainability, they have struggled to collect data suitable for such purposes. Attention to the different kinds of distance and diversity across which metrics are supposed to govern suggests reasons why they may fail to do so, even when wielded by otherwise powerful corporations.

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Trading in the secretive commodity

Cited by 15 publications

References 68 publications

Traders as sustainability governance actors in global food supply chains: A research agenda

Traders as sustainability governance actors in global food supply chains: A research agenda

Commodity traders in a storm: financialization, corporate power and ecological crisis

“Unable to Determine”: Limits to Metrical Governance in Agricultural Supply chains

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