Global Inequalities in the Bioeconomy: Thinking Continuity and Change in View of the Global Soy Complex

Maria Backhouse, Malte Lühmann and Anne Tittor
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Maria Backhouse: BMBF-Junior Research Group “Bioeconomy and Inequalities”, Institute of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Bachstr. 18k, 07743 Jena, Germany
Malte Lühmann: BMBF-Junior Research Group “Bioeconomy and Inequalities”, Institute of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Bachstr. 18k, 07743 Jena, Germany
Anne Tittor: BMBF-Junior Research Group “Bioeconomy and Inequalities”, Institute of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Bachstr. 18k, 07743 Jena, Germany

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: As a proposed pathway to societal transformation, the bioeconomy is aimed at providing a sustainable alternative to the fossil-based economy, replacing fossil raw materials with renewable biogenic alternatives. In this conceptual contribution, we argue that it is impossible to transform societies into sustainable bioeconomies considering the narrow boundaries of the bioeconomy as a policy. Drawing on approaches including agro-food studies, cheap food, and agrarian extractivism, we show that the bioeconomy is entangled in a broader context of social relations which call its claim to sustainability into question. Our analysis of the global soy complex, which represents the core of the current agro-food system, demonstrates how the bioeconomy perpetuates global inequalities with regard to trade relations, demand, and supply patterns, as well as power relations between the involved actors from the global to the local level. Against this background, we propose a fundamental rethink of the underlying understanding of transformation in bioeconomy policies. Instead of thinking the bioeconomy only along the lines of ecological modernisation, its proponents should consider studies on social-ecological transformation, which would entail radical structural change of the prevailing food regime to cope with the social-ecological crisis.

Keywords: agrarian extractivism; bioeconomy; cheap food; food regime; Latin America; social-ecological transformation; soy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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