Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty: Another Agrarian Transition is Possible
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By Eric Holt-Giménez and Annie Shattuck
For presentation to the workshop
Food Sovereignty: Theory, Praxis, and Power
St. Andrews College, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
November 17-18, 2008.
Thus far, most debates on agrofuels revolve around energy balances, economic and environmental cost benefits, and food and energy security. Few analysts have focused on the ways in which the industrial development of agrofuels is fundamentally transforming the world's food & fuel systems. The new corporate partnerships and increased market power of a handful of industry giants fosters corporate influence over research & development agendas, national agricultural and fuel policy, and global factor and product markets along the length and width of the food value chain. The convergence of these powerful industries has farreaching
implications that may not only lead to irreversible environmental impacts, but will exacerbate problems of land tenure, food security, migration and poverty worldwide. Agrofuels production has already had profound impacts on the global food system. Profits in agribusiness have risen dramatically in recent years, an increase the industry itself credits to the agrofuels boom. While industrial, mass produced, globally traded agrofuels are relatively new, the pattern of industrial transformation is a continuation of the last 200 years of industrialization of the food system. The agrofuels boom is only the newest development in the relationship between agriculture and industry that began with the Agrarian Transition, transformed the planet's food and fuel systems, and led to the global industrialization of agriculture itself. Over the last 50 years, capitalism's recurrent crises of overproduction and accumulation have resulted in steadily declining rates of profit in agriculture. Agrofuels are the perfect answer to the falling rate of profit to agrarian capital because they inflate prices of basic grains and further concentrate market power in the hands of oligopolies.
Like the agrarian transition fueled by the Green Revolution, the agrofuels boom will likely lead to an "Agrofuels Transition" that will enclose the much of the world's forests and drive most smallholders, family farmers, and indigenous peoples from the land. However, unlike the Agrarian Transition, there is no expanding industrial sector waiting to sop up excess labor. Neither will agrofuel itself subsidize the energy costs in the dramatic way petroleum has done. The expansion of agrofuels amount to an cross sector, agrarian “involution” (Geertz 1963).
This paper examines the myths around which agrofuels have been politically repackaged from a channel for excess production to a policy for “environmental and rural development.” We contend that these myths hide the agrarian transformation of our food systems behind the agrofuels boom. We then discuss the economic drivers, corporate consolidation, and the role of international finance in the agrofuels boom. We end with a discussion of the territorial restructuring taking place under the guise of “green technology,” discuss what this transition means for movements for food sovereignty, and outline the challenges to building sovereign food systems in the agrofuels economy.
