Trees Devouring Sheep: Climate Rentierism and the Financialised Land Grabbing of Welsh Farmland

Within the context of a move towards a ‘green transition’, UK agriculture is going through a period of post-Brexit uncertainty as it adapts to changes in agricultural policy, subsidy schemes, regulation, taxation and new natural capital markets. Rising costs of production, due to inflation, war and climate crisis, are putting extra stress on the agricultural industry and many farms are struggling to maintain profitability. At the same time, green investment funds are increasingly drawn to UK land as they seek to profit from the new opportunities of wind and solar farms, forestry, rewilding and conservation. Where farmers find profits hard to come by, green finance companies are better able to adapt to capital’s new requirements. In the process some agrarian rural populations are being made surplus (Li 2010). Gobally, the financialisation of farmland might be nothing new (see for example, Fairbairn 2020; Ouma 2020) but the new wave has a new impetus. Historically, finance moves into purchasing farmland at times of inflation and crisis in order to diversify portfolios and reduce risk (Knuth 2005; Fairbairn 2020; Ouma 2020). But land grabbing is new in the UK, and in-part is caused by new post-Brexit policies that have created opportunities for new forms of ‘climate rentierism’ (Schwartzman 2022). Not only are companies acquiring the land, but some are looking to manage the land themselves. This paper provides an empirical analysis of this emerging land rush. I use a case-study analysis of the investment company, Foresight Group, and their subsidiary funds, as they buy up land and farms for the purposes of coniferisation. The research finds that their financial strategy relies upon asset appreciation, the production and sale of timber products, and the extraction of ‘climate rents’ from government subsidies, grants, and the sale of carbon credits (Felli 2014; Apostopoulou 2020). It is this combination of business potential that makes the land so attractive to investment companies and what gives it such scope to expand. I contribute to a ‘thicker’ understanding of the concept of land grabbing and its consequences, by analysing the driving political economic factors, as it occurs in the global north (for other examples see Gunnoe 2014; Fairbairn 2020; Ouma 2020). For good reason, the land grabbing literature generally focuses on the global south, but it is increasingly a concern in the global north, as capital moves freely taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. Contrary to the often technocratic language of ‘green transitions’ this paper situates these changes as part of a wider classed contestation over land and the future of agrarian land. As land moves into the hands of investment companies, so too does the power to shape the future direction of the countryside, the agrarian question, and what kinds of green transitions are possible and who they serve.