"The Ethanol Boom and the Restructuring of the Food Regime" by Joseph Baines Working Papers on Capital as Power, 2014/3, July. pp. 1-50.
ABSTRACT: The agrofuel boom has brought about some of the most significant transformations in the world food system in recent decades. A rich and diverse body of agrarian political economy research has emerged that elucidates the conflicts and redistributional shifts engendered by these transformations. However, hitherto, less attention has been given to differences within agri-food capital. This paper contributes to the existing literature on agrofuels, by showing how one cluster of agri-food corporations and farmers within the US have benefited from soaring ethanol production at the expense of another cluster. More specifically, by adopting the method of disaggregation found in the capital as power approach, I delineate and chart the power trajectories of two corporate-led distributional coalitions that have vied over the course taken by the US ethanol sector: the ‘Agro-Trader nexus’ and the ‘Animal Processor nexus’. My main finding is that the US ethanol boom has been a vector of redistribution: increasing the earnings of the Agro-Trader nexus and Corn Belt farmers while reducing the earnings of the Animal Processor nexus and livestock farmers outside of the Corn Belt. This finding points to the limits and contradictions of agrofuels capitalism and the acute tensions that exist at the heart of the corporate food regime. FULL TEXT: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/410/ *** Recent additions and updates to the Bichler & Nitzan Archives: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/perl/latest To unsubscribe, reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the subject field. -- Jonathan Nitzan Political Science || Social and Political Thought York University 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario, M3J-1P3 Canada Voice: (416) 736-2100, ext. 88822 Fax: (416) 736-5686 Email: nitzan at yorku.ca The Bichler & Nitzan Archives:http://bnarchives.net Capital as Power:http://capitalaspower.com RECASP (journal):http://lha.uow.edu.au/hsi/research/recasp/articles/index.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
