Abstract
This article considers the global expansion of agrofuels feedstock production from a political economy perspective. It considers and dismisses the environmental and pro-poor developmental justifications attached to agrofuels. To local populations and direct producers, the specific destination of the crop as fuel, food, cosmetics or other final uses in faraway places is probably of less interest than the forms of (direct or indirect) appropriation of their land and the forms of their insertion or exclusion as producers in global commodity chains. Global demand for both agrofuels and food is stimulating new forms (or the resurgence of old forms) of corporate land grabbing and expropriation, and of incorporation of smallholders in contracted production. Drawing both on recent studies on agrofuels expansion and on the political economy literature on agrarian transition and capitalism in agriculture, this article raises the question whether ‘agrofuels capitalism’ is in any way essentially different from other forms of capitalist agrarian monocrop production, and in turn whether the agrarian transitions involved require new tools of analysis.
Notes
1For example, the material on Sime Darby's corporate website http://plantation.simedarby.com/Biodiesel, or Borgman (Citation2007) writing for John Deere.
2E.g. Thompson (Citation2008)
3We should note that the arguments made in this paper do not apply to (potential) models of agrofuels production in which large-scale capital might not be involved at all: small-scale, environmentally friendly agrofuels production primarily for local use, embedded in sustainable mixed-farming systems (for example, those discussed in Oxfam Citation2008, 34–5). This is a separate, and important, topic for research.
4This phrase is borrowed from Annie Shattuck (Citation2009, 94).
5As mentioned before the geopolitics of agrofuel production requires a separate analysis and is not discussed here.
6Agrofuel Africa, a subsidiary of Bio Fuel Norway (www.agrofuel.no).
7Unusually, Byberg expressed his regrets and a promise not to repeat the mistake.
8The deal is now reported to be cancelled after the change in government in early 2009 (BBC World Service News, 19 March 2009).
9GRAIN (Citation2009, and other reports accessible at www.grain.org) provides useful compilations and updates about such land deals.