The politics of agro-industrial greening: policy processes, market institutions and local power relations in the sugarcane sector of French overseas departments

ABSTRACT

In France, the agenda of agro-industrial greening has resulted in limited progress towards environmentally sustainable agriculture, while the prevailing productivist model remains dominant across agro-industrial systems. This article deploys an interdisciplinary analytical framework focused on two key explanatory variables – market and policy incentives – to explain the emergence or absence of agro-industrial greening initiatives. Additionally, it introduces a crucial intervening variable, power relations along the value chain, to understand the success or failure of such initiatives. Applying this framework empirically, a comparative analysis of greening dynamics within the sugarcane agro-industry across three French overseas departments is conducted. Following the liberalization of the European sugar market, private greening initiatives emerged in some of these territories but not others. I first demonstrate that policy processes did not play a determining role in instigating greening initiatives. Rather, local representations of market opportunities proved decisive. However, the ultimate outcomes of these initiatives were intricately tied to local power dynamics within territorially embedded agro-industrial value chains. Therefore, territorialized political economies not only impose structural constraints on greening initiatives, but also offer localized opportunities for eco-innovation through shifting discourses, representations and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Agro-industrial greening
• policy processes
• market institutions
• power relations along the value chain
• eco-innovation

Acknowledgements

This article stems from doctoral research funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, hosted by Sciences Po Bordeaux and the University of Bordeaux. I wish to thank Sébastien Chailleux and Andy Smith, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their useful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. Any remaining mistakes or omissions are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sugarcane is a water-intensive crop whose cultivation practices involve the use of herbicides and fertilizers that pollute freshwater ecosystems.

2 The most common rum in the world is molasses rum, obtained after fermentation and distillation of this byproduct of sugar refining. French rhum agricole is produced from fresh sugarcane juice, which is directly fermented and distilled. This product is almost exclusively produced in the French West Indies and represents 2% of rum sales worldwide.