Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5
BIOFUELS AND THE FINANCIALIZATION OF
THE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM
Philip McMichael
Introduction
1
his hapter suggests the biofuels question is more complex than simply a zero-sum
relation between fuel and food crops. While public authorities and development agen-
cies puzzle over whether, and to what extent, fuel-cropping is a sensible and/or sus-
tainable use of arable land, the deeper question concerns the implications of finan-
cialization of the global food system. As agriculture and food are increasingly incor-
porated into inancial hains, a crop-mix calculus becomes ever more irrelevant and
inapplicable, as decisions over material production are driven by an abstract financial
calculus in corporate boardrooms with litle concern for food security and/or envir-
onmental integrity.
2
The recent expansion of industrial biofuels expresses several trends in global
political-economy, including the global commodification of a time-honoured local en-
ergy supplement, and the consolidation of corporate power in the energy and ag-
ribusiness sectors. Manifestly, the 'biofuels revolution' is about the energy crisis, as
the cost of capital inputs (production, processing, transport) rises in an age of peak-
ing oil supplies. In addition, reduction of dependence on Middle Eastern oil drives
governments around the world to develop an industrial biofuels complex to relieve
energy insecurity. At the same time, biofuels represent a new profitability frontier
for agribusiness and energy sectors beset with declining productivity and/ or rising
costs. uestions about reducing or transforming energy-use paterns have been tabled
while politicians look to short-term job creation to recover from the deflating ef-
fects of a financial crisis - so while economic growth remains inviolate, biofuels, as
'green energy', are represented as a solution to environmental concerns. Simultan-
eously, the resort to biofuels symbolizes the fetish of exhange-value as, on the one
hand, fuel crops displace food crops and, on the other, deepen a process of global
