220
9 The Politics for a Fairer Bioeconomy
may be checkered for the public interest in the same way done to big pharmaceutical
companies by developing generic drugs—approaches that emerging economies such
as India and Brazil are very familiar with (see Brezis 2008).
9.3.2 Policy Lessons for Sustainable
Agri-Food-Biomass Systems
The bioeconomy offers a significant opportunity to promote sustainable rural development. That, however, requires shifting policy incentives away from corporatecontrolled feedstock monocultures and towards diverse agri-food-biomass systems.
Ideally, such systems should be based on agroecology and equitable allocation of
rights, roles, benefits and burdens that favor disadvantaged actors such as rural
communities. In practice, that requires: (i) organizational support and the political
inclusion of smallholders in bioeconomy value-web governance to ensure due representation of their views and preferences; (ii) mixing food and feedstock cultivation
for greater agroecological and economic diversification, as well as to safeguard local
food security; (iii) locally controlled value-added, such as local ethanol distilling,
vegetable oil extraction, and biofuel or bioproduct manufacturing, to promote technological development and distribute benefits more equitably. Value-added processing
would give farmers higher revenues and leave them with co-products (e.g., oilseed
cake, glycerin) that can be used locally or sold in other markets. In time, this
could be complemented with new bio-based downstream industries to increase the
bioeconomy’s benefits even further.
Such goals require public financial, technological, and logistical support. As
biofuel and other biomass production systems already rely heavily on public policies,
it becomes a matter of tuning such incentives. For one, public R&D could diversify from its nearly exclusive focus on agribusiness crops for large-scale production
and also develop suitable technologies for small-scale farmers. In turn, extension
services could complement science with traditional knowledge rather than continuously attempt to replace it in a quasi-missionary fashion. Economic incentives could
become conditional on meeting specific social and environmental standards based
on equitable smallholder inclusion and agroecological indicators (e.g., local capacity
enhancement, income generation, water conservation, nutrient cycling).
Furthermore, decentralized biofuel production systems may deserve more exploration. They include small-scale manufacturing for local fuel consumption and collectively owned biofuel industries to feed into the market. Joint, collaborative ownership and control are not unusual to farming sectors in developed countries. Such
endeavors would not necessarily require direct subsidies, but they certainly demand
credit to cooperatives, technical support for meeting fuel quality standards, and public
investments in infrastructure. Similar arrangements can exist for other bioproducts,
too. However, sustainable bioeconomy value webs anchored on agri-food-biomass
systems need careful design and sufficient experimentation with feedstock crops
9 The Politics for a Fairer Bioeconomy
may be checkered for the public interest in the same way done to big pharmaceutical
companies by developing generic drugs—approaches that emerging economies such
as India and Brazil are very familiar with (see Brezis 2008).
9.3.2 Policy Lessons for Sustainable
Agri-Food-Biomass Systems
The bioeconomy offers a significant opportunity to promote sustainable rural development. That, however, requires shifting policy incentives away from corporatecontrolled feedstock monocultures and towards diverse agri-food-biomass systems.
Ideally, such systems should be based on agroecology and equitable allocation of
rights, roles, benefits and burdens that favor disadvantaged actors such as rural
communities. In practice, that requires: (i) organizational support and the political
inclusion of smallholders in bioeconomy value-web governance to ensure due representation of their views and preferences; (ii) mixing food and feedstock cultivation
for greater agroecological and economic diversification, as well as to safeguard local
food security; (iii) locally controlled value-added, such as local ethanol distilling,
vegetable oil extraction, and biofuel or bioproduct manufacturing, to promote technological development and distribute benefits more equitably. Value-added processing
would give farmers higher revenues and leave them with co-products (e.g., oilseed
cake, glycerin) that can be used locally or sold in other markets. In time, this
could be complemented with new bio-based downstream industries to increase the
bioeconomy’s benefits even further.
Such goals require public financial, technological, and logistical support. As
biofuel and other biomass production systems already rely heavily on public policies,
it becomes a matter of tuning such incentives. For one, public R&D could diversify from its nearly exclusive focus on agribusiness crops for large-scale production
and also develop suitable technologies for small-scale farmers. In turn, extension
services could complement science with traditional knowledge rather than continuously attempt to replace it in a quasi-missionary fashion. Economic incentives could
become conditional on meeting specific social and environmental standards based
on equitable smallholder inclusion and agroecological indicators (e.g., local capacity
enhancement, income generation, water conservation, nutrient cycling).
Furthermore, decentralized biofuel production systems may deserve more exploration. They include small-scale manufacturing for local fuel consumption and collectively owned biofuel industries to feed into the market. Joint, collaborative ownership and control are not unusual to farming sectors in developed countries. Such
endeavors would not necessarily require direct subsidies, but they certainly demand
credit to cooperatives, technical support for meeting fuel quality standards, and public
investments in infrastructure. Similar arrangements can exist for other bioproducts,
too. However, sustainable bioeconomy value webs anchored on agri-food-biomass
systems need careful design and sufficient experimentation with feedstock crops