The Agrofuels Transition: Restructuring Places and Spaces in the Global Food System

Abstract

Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signalling transformations in the world’s food and fuel systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves favor transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in industry’s extractive transformation of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty— people’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible.