United States Biofuel Production as Climate Policy: Tensions between Greenhouse Gas Reduction, Agricultural Economies, And Agro-ecological Practice

Abstract

This article discusses U.S. biofuel production as a strategy for climate change mitigation, describing how energy independence and greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals may not be met as easily as initially hoped. Alternatively, it positions biofuel production as an environmental fix, a socio-ecological project indicative of the contradictory imperatives to conserve, exploit, and create resources for accumulation. It examines how this fix has developed in rural production areas, focusing on Iowa, in the United States. It also describes how rural residents negotiate a biofuels future that bears significant ecological and economic risks, while it maintains accumulation opportunity for dominant energy and agro-industry actors.