9.2 Unraveling the Politics of Bioeconomy Governance
205
these systems has often meant further land dispossession and reduced access to water
or food for vulnerable groups such as rural communities and indigenous peoples.
Rather than tackled, structural socio-economic inequalities have been fueled and
reinforced by thriving new bioeconomy markets.
Industry-controlled monocultures and contract farming schemes have been the two
main production arrangements currently undergirding the bioeconomy. The former
are vertically integrated systems where agribusiness directly controls both feedstock
cultivation and bio-based production. Especially as crop mechanization advances,
such vertically integrated production systems become increasingly socially exclusive.
If the rural poor participate, it is merely as plantation workers, often without job
security. Although such jobs may alleviate poverty, the latter’s structural causes
are maintained. The industry gains from all bioeconomy value-chain—or valueweb—development while dispensing only minor benefits in the form of low-paid
rural jobs. In reality, the poor often have been left worse off due to insecure and
health-degrading work conditions. Meanwhile, the impacts on and eventual erosion
of small-scale mixed farming are not accounted for, even though it usually creates
far more employment. Mixed farming also generates higher economic value per
hectare and tends to be more sustainable, yet it hardly receives attention in the form
of political, financial, or R&D support (IAASTD 2009; HLPE 2013a).
Conventional contract farming, in turn, has been nearly as inequitable. Despite
keeping nominal control over the land and other production resources, smallholders
effectively lease it to the contracting industry. Contracts are often negotiated on an
individual basis, with knowledge imbalances and frequently in contexts of monopsony (i.e., only one buyer available) and vulnerability from smallholders in poverty—
conditions that give the industry disproportionate bargaining power. Farmers are
“hired” but usually without safety nets or any standard employee rights, such as
collective negotiation. They can easily be laid off after a contract, although getting
back to mixed farming after shifting to input-intensive monocultures may prove
very challenging if not impossible. Besides, farmers become dependent on a single
cash-crop—in the bioeconomy case, a crop that might not have any alternative use
as either food or fodder (e.g., jatropha, castor bean). Such an exclusive dependence
makes smallholders even more vulnerable to market fluctuations and to a single buyer
that may not respond well to such economic volatility. The COVID-19 pandemic, for
instance, laid bare such vulnerability by throwing many Indonesian oil palm farmers
into a “survival crisis” as markets turned off (Chu and Das 2020).
In the best-case scenario, contracted farmers are to perpetually remain raw material providers, producing under terms dictated mainly by the industry while the latter
benefits from all value-added. In practice, however, industries have abandoned thousands of smallholders due to uneconomic biofuel production. Many contracts for
feedstock cultivation have thus configured cases of “adverse incorporation,” i.e.,
inclusion where poor farmers end up worse off, sometimes with both their food and
economic security compromised (see Hickey and Du Toit 2007).
Both approaches have been conservative in the sense that they do not tackle
the existing unequal distributive patterns and power relations of conventional agrifood systems—they instead expand on them. They constitute forms of what Moore
205
these systems has often meant further land dispossession and reduced access to water
or food for vulnerable groups such as rural communities and indigenous peoples.
Rather than tackled, structural socio-economic inequalities have been fueled and
reinforced by thriving new bioeconomy markets.
Industry-controlled monocultures and contract farming schemes have been the two
main production arrangements currently undergirding the bioeconomy. The former
are vertically integrated systems where agribusiness directly controls both feedstock
cultivation and bio-based production. Especially as crop mechanization advances,
such vertically integrated production systems become increasingly socially exclusive.
If the rural poor participate, it is merely as plantation workers, often without job
security. Although such jobs may alleviate poverty, the latter’s structural causes
are maintained. The industry gains from all bioeconomy value-chain—or valueweb—development while dispensing only minor benefits in the form of low-paid
rural jobs. In reality, the poor often have been left worse off due to insecure and
health-degrading work conditions. Meanwhile, the impacts on and eventual erosion
of small-scale mixed farming are not accounted for, even though it usually creates
far more employment. Mixed farming also generates higher economic value per
hectare and tends to be more sustainable, yet it hardly receives attention in the form
of political, financial, or R&D support (IAASTD 2009; HLPE 2013a).
Conventional contract farming, in turn, has been nearly as inequitable. Despite
keeping nominal control over the land and other production resources, smallholders
effectively lease it to the contracting industry. Contracts are often negotiated on an
individual basis, with knowledge imbalances and frequently in contexts of monopsony (i.e., only one buyer available) and vulnerability from smallholders in poverty—
conditions that give the industry disproportionate bargaining power. Farmers are
“hired” but usually without safety nets or any standard employee rights, such as
collective negotiation. They can easily be laid off after a contract, although getting
back to mixed farming after shifting to input-intensive monocultures may prove
very challenging if not impossible. Besides, farmers become dependent on a single
cash-crop—in the bioeconomy case, a crop that might not have any alternative use
as either food or fodder (e.g., jatropha, castor bean). Such an exclusive dependence
makes smallholders even more vulnerable to market fluctuations and to a single buyer
that may not respond well to such economic volatility. The COVID-19 pandemic, for
instance, laid bare such vulnerability by throwing many Indonesian oil palm farmers
into a “survival crisis” as markets turned off (Chu and Das 2020).
In the best-case scenario, contracted farmers are to perpetually remain raw material providers, producing under terms dictated mainly by the industry while the latter
benefits from all value-added. In practice, however, industries have abandoned thousands of smallholders due to uneconomic biofuel production. Many contracts for
feedstock cultivation have thus configured cases of “adverse incorporation,” i.e.,
inclusion where poor farmers end up worse off, sometimes with both their food and
economic security compromised (see Hickey and Du Toit 2007).
Both approaches have been conservative in the sense that they do not tackle
the existing unequal distributive patterns and power relations of conventional agrifood systems—they instead expand on them. They constitute forms of what Moore