Critical reviewSituating global finance in the Land Rush Debate: A critical review

•A critical literature review on financial sector-driven investments in farmland and agriculture.•Finds that much of this literature has adopted a rather structuralist political economy framework.•Highlights the drivers, scale, actors and manifestations of the finance-driven land rush.•Proposes an alternative approach to research the capitalization of farmland and agriculture.•Calls for engaging with the situated and sociotechnical dimensions of the finance-driven land rush.

This paper provides a critical review of the literature exploring the growing interest of global finance in farmland and agriculture, which has ensued at a global level since the financial and food crises of 2007/08. It finds that many of the existing works have approached this phenomenon through a more or less structuralist political economy framework that operates with a particular notion of 'financialization'. Despite the insights that work rooted in this intellectual tradition has provided at a macro-level, such a reading exposes several lacunae when it comes to the more practical, sociotechnical dimensions of the finance-driven land rush. After elaborating on these 'black boxes', the review sketches a research agenda that seeks to develop an alternative reading of finance's new love affair with 'real things' from below rather than from above.