This article was downloaded by: [Open University]
On: 30 April 2012, At: 08:50
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Critical Policy Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcps20
EU agri-innovation policy: two
contending visions of the bio-economy
a
b
Les Levidow , Kean Birch & Theo Papaioannou
a
a
Development Policy and Practice, Open University, Milton
Keynes, UK
b
Department of Social Science, York University, Toronto, Canada
Available online: 27 Apr 2012
To cite this article: Les Levidow, Kean Birch & Theo Papaioannou (2012): EU agri-innovation policy:
two contending visions of the bio-economy, Critical Policy Studies, 6:1, 40-65
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2012.659881
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation
that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any
instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary
sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,
demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Critical Policy Studies
Vol. 6, No. 1, April 2012, 40–65
EU agri-innovation policy: two contending visions of the bio-economy
Les Levidowa* , Kean Birchb and Theo Papaioannoua
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
a
Development Policy and Practice, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK; b Department of Social
Science, York University, Toronto, Canada
The knowledge-based bio-economy has gained prominence as a research and
innovation policy of the European Union. As a policy framework the knowledge-based
bio-economy has attracted two contending visions, which can be analyzed as
imaginaries – strategic discourses prefiguring a possible, desirable future. In the dominant vision, life sciences will enhance productivity for European competitive advantage
in global value chains. A rival vision links agroecology and shorter food supply chains,
as a means for farmers to gain more from the value that they add. Each vision favors
a different diagnosis of unsustainable agriculture and eco-efficient remedies. Each
extends a different paradigm of agri-innovation, foreseeing an economic community
that can gain from future markets. These two contending visions give different meanings to the same key terms – knowledge, biological resources and economy. In the EU’s
research program for a knowledge-based bio-economy, a life sciences vision dominates
the priorities, though agroecology has also gained a significant place in response to proposals from stakeholder networks. Through these efforts, research policy priorities have
been opened up to more plural agri-innovation pathways.
Keywords: imaginaries; agri-innovation policy; cultural political economy; critical
discourse analysis; sustainable agriculture; eco-efficiency; life sciences; agroecology;
knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE); European Technology Platforms (ETPs);
Framework Programme 7
1. Introduction
The European Union (EU) has long promoted technoscientific advance as essential
for societal progress. Within this discourse, key narratives have included the knowledge society, the knowledge-based economy (KBE) and its biotechnological extension,
the knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE). The latter has informed the European
Commission’s research priorities since at least 2007. These narratives have more than a
discursive role; they orient policymaking in particular ways and thereby direct resources to
particular forms of technoscience – also examined in this article.
Focusing on EU-level research priorities in light of the KBBE narrative, this article discusses several questions: What societal challenges are meant to be addressed by
the EU’s narrative of a KBBE? How does this narrative represent societal problems and
propose technoscientific solutions? What competing accounts have arisen? How do these
different accounts mobilize institutional resources and commitments for specific research
priorities?
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1946-0171 print/ISSN 1946-018X online
© 2012 Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2012.659881
http://www.tandfonline.com
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Critical Policy Studies
41
In brief, our analysis illustrates how rival stakeholder networks promote contending
visions of a future Europe in the name of the KBBE. In the dominant vision, the life
sciences will enhance productivity through global value chains that promote European
competitiveness. A rival vision links agroecology with shorter food supply chains as a
means for farmers to gain more from the value that they add.
Each vision favors a different diagnosis of currently unsustainable agriculture and
offers future eco-efficient solutions. Each vision elaborates economic and socio-technical
imaginaries – that is, feasible, desirable futures which can mobilize support networks and
resources for their realization, thereby changing institutional practices. In those ways, the
KBBE narrative encompasses divergent imaginaries.
To develop this argument, we adopt an analytical approach combining insights from
three areas: science and technology studies, cultural political economy and critical discourse analysis. This combination helps us to analyze how the KBBE narrative influences
the broader framework of research policy. Each vision draws upon socio-technical and economic ‘imaginaries’, which project future models of the world onto current priorities. And
each vision draws on different paradigms of agro-food innovation (see Table 1 and the next
section). Through policy frameworks which discursively naturalize technoscientific solutions and designate external expertise for them, specific future visions are materialized in
institutional practices, especially in priorities for research funds.
In terms of analytical method, the focus is stakeholders’ agendas as rival imaginaries.
In order to identify convergent and divergent meanings of key terms relevant to the
KBBE narrative (as summarized in Table 2), initial analysis drew on documents from
several bodies: European Commission, European Technology Platforms (e.g. Plants,
Biofuels, Sustainable Chemistry, etc.), their precursors, (e.g. Biofrac, BioMat Net, EPSO,
EPOBIO), their umbrella consortium (Becoteps), farmers’ organizations (COPA, IFOAM),
the Standing Committee on Agriculture Research (SCAR) and its expert foresight reports.
In analyzing documents from these bodies, we focused on key terms (e.g. eco-efficiency,
sustainability, resources) to identify their role in contending visions of a future Europe. For
this reason, no specific discourse technique was used.
The document analysis provided a sharper basis for interview questions. For example,
‘How does the bio-economy change the meaning of agriculture?’, and ‘How does your
technoscientific agenda depend upon wider societal changes?’ These interviews were carried out with approximately 20 individuals from the same bodies which originated the
documents. Along with those sources, interviewees’ comments inform the analysis and
Table 2, though only a few quotes are explicitly cited (for lack of space). More specifically
regarding the method, actors’ statements with similar key words were juxtaposed in a Word
file in order to identify similar or different meanings. These discursive comparisons provided a basis to draft Table 2, which became progressively longer throughout the study. The
draft table was shown to some interviewees, whose comments stimulated extra searches in
documents or interview transcripts.
A preliminary analysis was presented at several events – partners’ meetings of the
Cooperative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe (CREPE) project, at its
Brussels workshop (CREPE 2010) and in the SCAR working group on agricultural knowledge and information systems. Also the lead author was invited to join TP Organics’
strategy discussions for influencing research agendas. In all those venues, participants
clarified divergent agendas for agricultural innovation and so indirectly contributed to our
analysis.
This article is structured as follows. Section 2 explains our hybrid theoretical framework, namely: as a master narrative, the KBBE encompasses rival visions. Each elaborates
42
L. Levidow et al.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
different economic and socio-technical imaginaries; each draws on different paradigms of
agro-food innovation (see Table 1). Section 3 shows how the KBBE was originally a narrative for relaunching the life sciences, whose future vision and research agenda gained
support from the European Commission. Section 4 analyzes how the life sciences vision
links a socio-technical imaginary of converging technologies with an economic imaginary of global value chains, as a basis for materializing its vision in dominant priorities
for European Commission (EC) research funding. Section 5 examines how the rival of
agroecology vision links a socio-technical imaginary of eco-functional intensification with
an economic imaginary of agro-food-energy relocalization, as a basis for materializing this
vision in the margins of EC research priorities. Section 6 summarizes the overall argument,
while also suggesting how the hybrid theoretical framework may have broader relevance.
2. Analytical perspectives: narratives, imaginaries and technoscientific
paradigms
To analyze the KBBE narrative, we combine insights from critical perspectives across
several academic literatures. These include cultural discourse analysis, and science and
technology studies. Their relevant concepts will be elaborated and linked here as a new
theoretical framework, summarized in Table 1, for analyzing EU agri-innovation policy.
To start, technoscientific policy can be (and has been) analyzed as a narrative. Such
analyses illustrate how narratives conflate general societal progress with particular science
and technology (S&T).
Master-narratives are the cultural vehicles through which ideas of progress are linked to S&T
in particular ways. These are not ‘merely’ stories or fictions. They are an important part of the
cultural and institutional fabric, of taken-for-granted aspects of social order. (Felt et al. 2007,
p. 9)
Such narratives promote technoscientific solutions for resolving a range of societal problems. If S&T generate problems, these are cast solely as mistaken technological choices,
rather than issues of problem-definition or societal aims (Felt et al. 2007, p. 80). Thus the
putative technoscientific solutions pre-define the problems to be solved.
Beyond simply discourse, i.e. language used strategically, different narratives contain
future visions that can be analyzed as imaginaries – ‘representations of how things might
or could or should be’. These imaginaries may be institutionalized and routinized as networks of practices (Fairclough 2010, p. 266). Hence an imaginary pre-figures a possible
and intended reality, which includes an objective and a strategy to achieve it. As Fairclough
(2010, p. 480) further argues, ‘Imaginaries produced in discourse are an integral part
of strategies; and if strategies are successful and become implemented, then associated
imaginaries can become operationalized, transformed into practice, made real’.
Through imaginaries, semiotic-cultural meanings are integral to constructing the world.
Each actor regards some aspects as significant, depending on specific meaning systems.
As construals of the future, imaginaries also contribute to constituting the socio-technical
and socio-economic world, insofar as they guide a critical mass of self-confirming actions
premised on their validity (Jessop 2009, p. 338). A critical analysis needs ‘to explain why
and how some construals are selected, get embodied in individual agents or routinized in
organizational operations’ (Jessop 2009, p. 339), thus helping to institutionalize particular practices. To illuminate this process, here we combine socio-technical and economic
imaginaries as complementary aspects of a vision elaborating narratives such as the KBBE.
Critical Policy Studies
43
2.1. Economic imaginaries
Economic imaginaries are discursively constituted visions which abstract from and thus
simplify complex economic activities. Imaginaries anticipate and potentially facilitate
specific economic futures from a range of possibilities. According to Jessop (2005, p. 147):
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
on the one hand, the economic imaginary presupposes a substratum of substantive economic
relations as its elements; on the other, where that imaginary is successfully operationalized
and institutionalized, it transforms and naturalizes these elements into the moments of a
specific economy. For economic imaginaries identify, privilege, and seek to stabilize some
economic activities from the totality of economic relations and transform them into objects of
observation, calculation, and governance.
In particular, an ‘imagined economic community’ may become grounded both in an ‘imagined economic space’ and an ‘imagined community of economic interest’ among diverse
social forces (Jessop 2005, p. 162).
Current economic imaginaries often frame territorial jurisdictions as competitive units
in an economic fight with foreign rivals. One example is the construction of ‘Europe’
as a single political–economic ‘space of competitiveness’ facing a common external
threat, especially through a race for technological innovation. This imaginary plays a
strategic role:
The idea of ‘competitive threat’ (especially from East Asia and the USA) was central to developing a rationale for market liberalisation across the European Community and helped to fuel
the case for both completing the single market and developing adjunct programmes such as
technology policy. (Rosamond 2002, p. 168)
These economic imaginaries have been increasingly driven by neoliberal economic
assumptions about the benefits of free markets and competitive market relations. Hence
neoliberal policies have extended deregulation, privatization, public–private partnerships,
intellectual property rights, etc., thus forcibly creating new market relations. In a European
context, the political process was conceived as an opportunity to open up further the
European region to the globalizing economy, especially to accelerate the deregulation and
privatization of the European economies, thus liberating market forces from the fetters of
government intervention (van Apeldoorn 2000, p. 166). Citing similar imperatives, expert
advisors urge greater efficiency as essential to avoid a productivity gap and economic
decline in a global race (e.g. O’Mahony and van Ark 2003, cf. Aho Report 2006, p. vii; see
Figure 1 as a satirical comment).
Exemplifying this neoliberal agenda has been the ‘knowledge-based economy’ (e.g.
CEC, 1993). Competitiveness has been a key rationale for research policy: the Lisbon
agenda has sought greater research and development (R&D) investment to make Europe
‘the globally most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010’ (EU Council 2000).
As a master narrative, the ‘knowledge-based economy’ can encompass many futures,
though the neoliberal variant has been dominant (Jessop 2005, p. 156).
In this neoliberal economic imaginary, global value chains assume greater importance
as both opportunities and imperatives for globally competitive strategies:
With regard to this knowledging technology, actors are encouraged to treat regional spaces
as (potential) clusters in which firms, suppliers, service providers, and associated institutions
interact to form export-led production- and/or service-oriented nodes . . . that are opened
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
44
L. Levidow et al.
Figure 1. Catching (up with) the future – through the Lisbon targets?
Source: Philippe Geluck via the European Commission
to foreign direct investment and multinational-dominated global value chains. It also selfresponsibilizes public and private agencies to become competitive, entrepreneurial and worldmarket oriented in their journey towards ‘catch-up competitiveness’. (Sum 2009, p. 197)
These processes select particular economic imaginaries from among diverse networks of
actors with unequal access to power and resources (Sum 2009, p. 184). Yet these inequalities can be hidden within an imagined political–economic community competing against
foreign rivals. Next we consider the types of socio-technical imaginaries which are linked
to the economic ones we have just discussed.
2.2. Socio-technical imaginaries
As a theoretical concept, socio-technical imaginaries’ are ‘collectively imagined forms of
social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific
and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, p. 120). These imaginaries either
describe attainable futures or prescribe futures that states believe ought to be attained. The
concept can help to analyze how ‘national S&T projects encode and reinforce particular
conceptions of what a nation stands for’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, p. 120).
A socio-technical imaginary includes several aspects: the purposes of S&T, the public good to be served, participation in steering, by what means, and means to resolve
controversies about the pace or direction of R&D. In this way, socio-technical imaginaries
underlie and drive policies:
Critical Policy Studies
45
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
National policies for the innovation and regulation of science-based technologies are useful
sites for examining imaginaries at work. Such policies balance distinctive national visions
of desirable futures driven by science and technology against fears of either not realizing
those futures or causing unintended harm in the pursuit of technological advances. S&T
policies thus provide unique sites for exploring the role of political culture and practices in
stabilizing particular imaginaries, as well as the resources that must be mobilized to represent technological trajectories as being in the ‘national interest’. (Jasanoff and Kim 2009,
p. 121)
Each socio-technical imaginary entails an implicit understanding of what is socially desirable. The concept builds on ‘technoscientific imaginaries’, which are ‘imbued with implicit
understandings of what is good or desirable in the social world writ large’. In that sense,
technoscientific imaginaries are simultaneously also ‘social imaginaries’, encoding collective visions of the good society (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, p. 122). In the authors’ case study,
nuclear power in the United States and South Korea, the ‘national interest’ has been reimagined according to different socio-technical imaginaries in the two countries (Jasanoff
and Kim 2009, p. 124).
Here the analytical concept ‘socio-technical imaginary’ will be adapted in two ways:
while Jasanoff and Kim (2009) compared two countries, our focus is divergent imaginaries
within EU policy. And this has increasingly linked technoscientific advance with global
economic competitiveness (Jessop 2005, Felt et al. 2007). More specifically, we focus
on agro-food innovation, whose rival imaginaries draw on different technoscientific
paradigms, as presented next.
2.3. Paradigms of agro-food innovation
Contending imaginaries elaborate different socio-technical and economic forms of agrofood innovation. These differences can be theorized as different technoscientific paradigms
(see Table 1, lower part). Paradigms entail different accounts of engineering, product quality and knowledge systems. These differences have been theorized as binary typologies in
the sense that each aspect has two alternative accounts, as shown in the two main columns.
The first typology distinguishes between genetic engineering and agroecological engineering. Also known as life sciences, genetic engineering aims to modify plants to enhance
productivity in adverse conditions – e.g. caused by pests, pathogens, drought, saline environments and unfertile soils – or to design plants for new objectives such as altered
nutritional contents. By contrast, agroecological engineering aims to design agricultural
systems that require as few agrochemicals and energy inputs as possible. Instead such systems rely on ecological interactions between biological components to enable agricultural
systems to boost their own soil fertility, productivity and crop protection (Vanloqueren and
Baret 2009, p. 972).
A combination of factors has generally locked out agroecology from research policy:
agricultural research systems created a technological and institutional lock-in situation that
severely hinders or stops the development of one of the technological paradigms, in this case
agroecological engineering, though both paradigms make sense and make science. . . .
Agroecology has stayed however on the margins of the agricultural sciences, as it is distant
from the main scientific approach as well as from the technological regime and the larger
economic and political dominant trends. (Vanloqueren and Baret 2009, p. 980)
46
Table 1.
L. Levidow et al.
Hybrid theoretical framework for rival visions of the KBBE.
Vision
Life Sciences
Agroecology
Theoretical concept
(imaginary or
paradigm)
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Sociotechnical
imaginary: the
public good
(extending Jasanoff
and Kim 2009)
Converging (bio, nano, info)
Organic short-loop recycling
technologies for identifying
processes using renewable
valuable substances, optimizing
resources more efficiently, e.g. by
their composition, using
maintaining and linking on-farm
renewable resources more
resources, while also enhancing
efficiently, expanding their
farmers’ knowledge of renewable
availability and thus overcoming
resources.
constraints.
Economic imaginary:
Global value chains, especially for Shorter agro-food supply chains
future markets
linking agriculture with energy
relocalizing agro-food–energy
(extending Jessop
and other industrial products, as a production and consumption,
2005)
basis for privatizable knowledge,
gaining consumer support, and
thus enhancing European
thus helping producers to gain
economic competitiveness in
from the value that they add.
global markets.
Agroecological engineering:
Genetic engineering and life
Technoscientific
designing agricultural systems
sciences: modifying plants for
engineering paradigm
that minimize need for external
greater productivity or for new
(paraphrasing
objectives, e.g. nutritional content, inputs, instead relying on
Vanloqueren and
ecological interactions.
via capital-intensive knowledge
Baret 2009)
production.
Quality in sociotechnical Decomposability of qualities via
Integral/comprehensive product
paradigm
converging technologies, for
identity via holistic methods and
(paraphrasing Allaire
recomposition into profitable
quality characteristics
and Wolf 2004)
combinations for extra market
recognizable by consumers, as a
value.
basis for their support.
Computable data for novel inputs
Knowledge for validating
Knowledge in
and/or outputs which can gain
comprehensive product identities
sociotechnical
market advantage. Proprietary
of various kinds, e.g. organic
paradigm
certification, agroecological
information dependent on public
(paraphrasing Allaire
and Wolf 2004)
reference networks, especially for production methods, territorial
characteristics, specialty products,
matching compositional qualities
farmers’ markets, etc.
with consumer preferences.
Notes: For two rival visions of the KBBE, a hybrid theoretical framework can link several complementary
concepts. Each vision entails complementary sociotechnical and economic imaginaries of a desirable, feasible
Europe; the first two rows elaborate such theories for this case study. Each vision also draws upon different
paradigms of agro-food engineering, product quality and knowledge; the last three rows paraphrase the theory,
which is anyway specific to the case study of agro-innovation. The two columns summarize our overall theoretical
framework as binary typologies: each aspect has two divergent accounts.
The second typology distinguishes between forms of product quality. Converging technologies seek to identify, extract and decompose specific qualities, towards their eventual
recomposition into profitable combinations. By contrast, an integral product identity
depends on holistic methods and quality characteristics recognizable by consumers, as a
basis for their support (Allaire and Wolf 2004).
Finally, different qualities correspond to divergent knowledge systems. Within a
decomposability paradigm, research seeks computable data for single traits or functional attributes (e.g. based on genetic characteristics) which can enhance novel inputs
Agro-industrial monoculture systems – making farmers dependent
on external inputs, undermining their knowledge, distancing
consumers from agri-production knowledge, etc.
Agroecological methods for maintaining and linking on-farm
resources (plant genetic diversity and biocontrol agents), thus
minimizing farmers’ dependence of external resources.
Eco-functional intensification via farmers’ knowledge of
agro-ecological methods: improving nutrient recycling
techniques, enhancing biodiversity and improving the health of
soils, crops and livestock.
Converting agricultural waste into bioenergy in on-farm
small-scale units, thus substituting for external inputs.
Agro-ecological processes, in mixed and integrated farming, for
optimizing use of energy and nutrients, linked with shorter
agro-food chains.
Ecological processes (e.g. nutrient recycling, soil as a living
system, whole-farm systems, etc.) which can be used by
farmers for agricultural production.
Farmers’ collective experiential knowledge of biological
resources, ecological processes and product quality, as a basis to
minimize dependence on external inputs. Scientific research to
explain why/how some agroecological practices are effective.
Open-source exchange of information and biological materials
(organicEprints).
Shorter agro-food chains, based on consumers’ trust and greater
proximity to producers, as a basis for valorizing their
knowledge of biological resources, cultivation methods and
food culture.
Inefficiency (of farm inputs, processing methods and outputs) –
disadvantaging European agro-industry, which falls behind in
global market competition for technoscientific advance.
More efficient plant-cell factories as biomass sources for diverse
industrial products, thus substituting for fossil fuels and
expanding available resources in the global economy.
Sustainable intensification via smart inputs from lab knowledge:
enhancing external inputs, engineering their compositional
qualities and increasing land productivity.
Redesigning plants and processing methods for more efficiently
converting biomass into energy and other industrial products.
Sustainable production and conversion of biomass (or renewable
raw materials) for various food, health, fibre, energy and other
industrial products.
Mechanical-informatics properties as a natural cornucopia which
must be identified, unlocked, mined and commercialized in
value chains.
Computable data for more efficient, flexible agro-inputs,
production methods and/or outputs which can gain advantage
in value chains. Laboratory research to create databases of
standard information.
Privatizable knowledge, verified by pre-competitive research and
public reference standards.
Global value chains realizing market value in commodities
(agro-inputs and outputs) and proprietary knowledge, as a basis
for capital-intensive knowledge to gain from added value.
Organics industry, organics institutes, COPA’s organics section,
environmental NGOs
Agroecology
Multinational companies, some SMEs, plant scientists, COPA
Life sciences
Notes: The text in this table paraphrases stakeholders’ statements promoting two rival visions for sustainable agriculture. Each vision appropriates and recasts key terms from the other.
Some text draws upon concepts in Table 1.
Economy
Knowledge
Biological resources
Agriculture–energy linkages:
substituting bioenergy for fossil fuels
Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy
(KBBE)
Eco-efficiency as intensification: using
renewable resources more efficiently
Solution in sustainable agriculture
Stakeholder networks via European
Technology Platforms
Issue or term
Societal challenges: threats to overcome
Vision
Table 2. Diagnoses and solutions according to two visions of the KBBE.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Critical Policy Studies
47
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
48
L. Levidow et al.
and outputs. Although dependent on publicly shared knowledge, each firm may attempt
to develop proprietary information systems. By contrast, an integral product identity
paradigm seeks to valorize distinctive comprehensive qualities which can be socially
validated for/by consumers in various forms, e.g. organic certification, territorial characteristics, specialty labels or farmers’ markets (Allaire and Wolf 2004).
These innovation paradigms have some complementary aspects. Genetic engineering complements the decomposability of qualities for more lucrative recompositions.
Likewise agroecology complements agro-food relocalization: ‘Agroecologists privilege
alternative food systems operating at a regional scale or based on closer farmer–consumer
relationships, or product networks that mobilize localized resources and have strong identities’ (Vanloqueren and Baret 2009, p. 981). These complementary aspects correspond to
distinctive visions of the KBBE, as summarized in Table 1.
In sum, the KBBE narrative has two divergent visions, each combining socio-technical
and economic imaginaries along different lines. Likewise each vision combines different
technoscientific paradigms of agro-food innovation. Accordingly, each vision frames key
terms of the KBBE – knowledge, biological resources and economy – in its own image, as
summarized in Table 2.
Drawing on our hybrid analytical framework, the next three sections survey the KBBE
narrative and then its two rival visions in turn – life sciences and agroecology – corresponding literally to Vision documents of stakeholder networks. In each section, the first
sub-section analyzes how the vision links economic with socio-technical imaginaries in
advocating specific research priorities. Then the second sub-section analyses its influence
on research priorities of the European Commission.
3. KBBE as a narrative of societal progress
As a narrative, the KBBE builds upon earlier EU policy discourses. It links a sociotechnical imaginary of eco-efficient innovation with an economic imaginary of European
competitiveness. Going further, the KBBE envisages abundant renewable bio-resources
for overcoming environmental constraints and thus achieving sustainable development.
Promoting specific research agendas towards a KBBE, industry-wide consortia have gained
deference in routine procedures of the European Commission’s Framework Programme 7,
as shown in this section.
3.1. Racing for European competitiveness
The KBBE narrative extends earlier EU policies on the knowledge-based economy (e.g.
CEC 1993), especially the Lisbon agenda. These policy frameworks have promoted
biotechnology and life sciences as symbols of European progress. However, European
protests deterred European investment in agricultural biotechnology in the late 1990s. Later
the life sciences were relaunched as the KBBE, emphasizing non-food uses of renewable
raw materials.
Economic competitiveness has been the main treaty basis for the EU’s R&D budget,
which comprises half the EU budget. According to the Lisbon Treaty:
The Union shall have the objective of strengthening its scientific and technological bases by
achieving a European research area in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology
circulate freely, and encouraging it to become more competitive, including in its industry. (EU
Council 2007, p. 85)
Critical Policy Studies
49
This familiar imperative has been extended by the KBBE narrative. At the 2007 Cologne
Summit of the European Council, its German president declared, ‘Europe has to take the
right measures now and to allocate the appropriate resources to catch up and take a leading
position in the race to the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy’ (EU Presidency 2007, p. 6).
Likewise when the Belgian presidency hosted a follow-up conference on the KBBE, the
Directorate-General (DG) for Research Commissioner stated:
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Today, Europe has a strong life sciences and biotechnology research base to support the development of a sustainable and smart Bio-Economy. It has a leading position in chemical and
enzyme industries and a fast growing biotechnologies sector. However, a lot of work still
needs to be done in order to fully exploit the potential of the sector today and ensure that
Europe remains competitive tomorrow. (Geoghegan-Quinn 2010, p. 3)
Alongside the focus on economic competitiveness, the KBBE narrative also extends earlier environmental policy through the idea of eco-efficiency, which is now equated with
sustainable development. This linkage has a long history in EU environmental policy,
which has sought to achieve ‘sustainable industrial development, involving the formulation of the concept of ecoefficiency, and partnerships between governments and industry,
using industry’s capacity for innovation’ (CEC 1998, p. 5). This policy incorporated a
similar account of eco-efficiency from global business lobbies advocating market instruments for sustainable development (Schmidheiny 1992). Such discourse illustrates how
socio-technical and economic imaginaries are combined; societal progress is equated with
‘sustainable’ economies, in turn dependent upon eco-efficient innovations.
The KBBE narrative thereby links environmental and economic sustainability through
the life sciences: living matter will be used more efficiently, thus substituting for fossil
fuels and synthetic chemicals. In this vision, sustainability is equated with more efficiently
redesigning and using renewable raw materials, as a basis to enhance global economic
competitiveness and thus European prosperity. At its launch conference the KBBE had this
initial vision:
The EU’s ambition is to build the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy
implies the existence of an efficient and effective knowledge-based bio-economy: a sustainable
economy based on renewable resources. This will help wean Europe off its dependence on
diminishing oil supplies and will enable it to better compete with fossil-fuel rich areas of the
world by levelling the energy playing field. It will also lead to the creation of new and innovative goods and services that will enhance Europe’s competitiveness and meet the needs of its
citizens. (DG Research 2005, p. 3)
These tasks require a ‘holistic approach’ – which means converging technologies.
According to the DG Research Commissioner:
The life sciences and biotechnology are significant drivers of growth and competitiveness here.
These sciences will help us to live in a healthier and more sustainable fashion by finding more
environmentally friendly production methods and pushing forward the frontiers of science . . .
This requires a holistic approach that transcends the narrow confines of scientific disciplines –
blending, for example, the bio- and nano-sciences – and cuts across policy areas: from research
and innovation, to trade and health and consumer affairs. (DG Research 2005, pp. 1, 3)
Combining socio-technical and economic imaginaries, this ‘holistic’ approach informs
commitments to the life sciences. New industry-led networks elaborate research priorities to achieve eco-efficient and therefore sustainable innovation. In preparing Framework
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
50
L. Levidow et al.
Programme 7 the Commission invited industry to establish European Technology
Platforms (ETPs), especially to define research agendas that would attract industry investment. This arrangement was meant to fulfill the Lisbon agenda target of 3% of gross
domestic product (GDP) being spent on research. ETPs were asked to involve ‘all relevant stakeholders’ in developing a ‘common vision’ emphasizing societal needs and
benefits.
For the agri-food-forestry-biotech sectors, ETPs were initiated mainly by industry organizations led by multinational companies with support from scientist organizations that
had already formulated research agendas (e.g. EPSO/DG Research 2004, EPOBIO 2006).
Each ETP published a vision of Europe for the year 2025. According to these ETPs, we
need a European society in which all stakeholders understand and trust the concept of
the bio-economy, whose public image must be improved through better communication
(Becoteps 2011, p. 21). Given their commitments to capital-intensive research and innovation, ETPs cannot accommodate civil society organizations, which have remained marginal
to the policy process. Membership in ETPs effectively defines who is (or is not) a relevant
stakeholder, according to their prospective contribution to future value chains.
3.2. Routinizing deference to ETPs
A prime target for stakeholder influence has been the Framework Programme 7 (FP7) on
Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology (FAFB; see Figure 2). As a means to
address societal challenges, the FAFB program has aimed at ‘building a Knowledge Based
Bio-Economy in Europe by bringing together science, industry and other stakeholders to
exploit emerging research opportunities that address social, environmental and economic
challenges’ (DG Research/FAFB 2006a, p. 3). This research agenda defines the KBBE
as ‘the sustainable, eco-efficient transformation of renewable biological resources into
Figure 2. FAFB program, from DG Research PowerPoint presentation, 2006.
Source: European Commission.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Critical Policy Studies
51
health, food, energy and other industrial products’. This socio-technical imaginary assigns
beneficent characteristics to such products: ‘Eco-efficient products are less polluting and
less resource-intensive in production, and allow a more effective management of biological
resources’, according to the FAFB program (DG Research/FAFB 2006a, p. 3).
When FP7 began, approximately half the calls were drawn from proposals of ETPs,
in turn representing mainly capital-intensive industry. The food, crops and forestry
Technology Platforms were among those whose proposals had the greatest coverage in
FP7 priorities (DG Research 2007, p. vii). Beyond the general perspective in their strategic
research agendas, each ETP elaborates specific proposals for research topics; these proposals are regularly sent to the Commission at the start of each annual procedure for setting the
next year’s work program (interview, ETP PftF, 5 December 2008, interview, ETP Food for
Life, 4 March 2009, interview, DG Research-E/FAFB, 10 October 2008). This procedure
routinizes a dependence on industry proposals and turns their socio-technical imaginary
into well-resourced practices.
The Commission has deferred to ETPs as if they were neutral experts on both the
socio-technical and economic prospects of research proposals. The process outsources
such expertise, thus reinforcing and validating the ETPs’ imaginaries. ETPs’ strategic
research agendas lighten the Commission’s internal evaluation process, according to
several interviews with staff in the FAFB program. For example:
The SRA [strategic research agenda] was written by respected scientists. We have to assume
that it is the best document possible. So our internal process is of secondary importance.
(Interview, DG Research-E/FAFB, 10 October 2008)
Through this routine deference, an industry-led agenda is represented as an expert judgment about societal challenges and optimum solutions via research. However, the KBBE
narrative has attracted divergent accounts of the societal challenges that Europe faces,
especially constraints on natural resources and more ‘sustainable’ ways to use them.
Rival stakeholder networks have promoted different visions, diagnoses and solutions – in
particular, life sciences versus agroecology.
The next two sections analyze those two contending visions in turn. Each section
firstly shows how the vision elaborates distinctive imaginaries of an economic community and technoscientific advance. Then the section analyses the vision’s influence on EU
agri-research.
4. Dominant vision: life sciences
In the dominant life sciences vision of the KBBE, a socio-technical imaginary of converging technologies is linked with an economic imaginary of global value chains, as if this
linkage were building a European economic community. These capital-intensive research
agendas have gained a prominent place in FP7 funding priorities, thus marginalizing others.
4.1. Promoting eco-efficient inputs and conversion processes
The life sciences vision foresees a transition from fossil fuels to abundant renewable
resources, thanks to converging technologies, thus linking an economic imaginary with a
socio-technical imaginary. When the Technology Platform ‘Plants for the Future’ launched
its Vision 2025, the DG Research Commissioner said:
52
L. Levidow et al.
Scientific and technological progress, especially in plant biotechnology and genomics, will
have to play a role in achieving this transition, in particular under the constraints of limited availability of arable land, climate change and increased seasonal weather. (EPSO/DG
Research 2004, p. 6)
A major societal challenge is defined as rising food demand and resource constraints –
which must be addressed through more efficient production methods. According to the
above technology platform, for example:
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
The increased demand for animal products should be met by ensuring the sustainable production of high-quality, sufficient, and affordable feed. The composition of feed could
be optimised in terms of macro and micronutrients for both nutritional efficiency and
environmental issues. (Plants for the Future TP 2007a, p. 5)
Efficiency benefits are attributed to novel inputs:
In the coming decades, we anticipate the creation of more efficient plants (able to use water
and fertiliser more efficiently and to be self-resistant to pests), leading to more efficient farms
and new economic opportunities. (Plants for the Future TP 2007a, p. 9)
More recently an expert report predicted a rise in global population to 9 billion by 2050 and
changing dietary patterns. Consequently, ‘annual meat production will need to rise by over
200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes’ by 2050, posing an imperative for ‘increasing input efficiencies’ in grain production (FAO 2009, pp. 1, 2). This warning has been
widely cited as an expert basis for the need to devise more efficient inputs, especially
for increasing the productivity of farmland – what the Royal Society (2009) has called
‘sustainable intensification’.
As the technoscientific solution, ‘Biotechnology and other modern technologies,
including long-term selection programmes, give new ways to improve productivity, efficiency and robustness’, according to a consortium of Technology Platforms (Becoteps
2011, pp. 8, 9). By framing the societal problem as low efficiency, increased production
and consumption of meat becomes a solution to societal challenges, rather than a problem of resource demands. An eco-efficiency techno-fix proposes to accommodate global
markets, as if these were exogenous to agro-food production.
Here agriculture is recast for producing raw materials as degradable biomass. The
KBBE is thereby ‘the sustainable production and conversion of biomass into various food,
health, fibre and industrial products and energy’; such conversion ‘is also sustainable, being
efficient, producing little or no waste, and often using biological processing’, according to a
consortium of European Technology Platforms (Becoteps 2011, p. 5). Likewise a key challenge is ‘sustainable feedstock production’; the post-2013 Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) must help ‘to maintain a competitive supply of raw materials’ (Clever Consult
BVBA 2010, p. 11).
To increase resource availability, the life sciences vision also promotes horizontal integration across sectors – food, feed, energy and other industrial products. Agriculture is
seen as ‘oil wells of the 21st century’ (BioMat Net 2006), i.e. like a mineral reserve for
extracting renewable resources as biomass which can be cracked into its various components for further processing. According to proponents, technological innovation provides
new employment opportunities – dependent upon horizontally integrating agriculture with
energy. According to a Technology Platform:
Critical Policy Studies
53
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
the production of green energy will also face the exceptional challenge of global industrial
restructuring in which the very different value chains of agricultural production and the biorefining industries must be merged with the value chains of the energy providers. (Plants for the
Future TP 2007b, p. 33)
For diversifying the sources and uses of biomass, bio-refineries already convert oilseeds
or grain into liquid fuel and ‘co-products’, which can be used as feed. The latter even
gains a bonus in greenhouse gas savings under the Renewable Energy Directive (EC
2009), on the assumption that co-products substitute for production elsewhere and so
reduce global demand on resources (CEC 2010, p. 13). The rationale further naturalizes
the societal challenge to increase grain and thus meat production via eco-efficient methods. Accordingly, some crops are being genetically modified for compositional changes –
e.g. for commercially more valuable feed and/or for easier breakdown of cell walls.
In particular, efforts towards lignocellulosic fuels illustrate how the dominant vision
frames societal problems for bio-engineering solutions. Lignin in plant cell walls impedes
their breakdown, thus limiting the use of the whole plant as biomass for various uses including energy. For agricultural, paper and biofuel feedstock systems, ‘lignin is considered to
be an undesirable polymer’ (EPOBIO 2006, p. 27). As a solution, ‘this larger-scale research
effort was considered essential to achieve the foundation for designing in planta strategies
to engineer bespoke [custom-made] cell walls optimised for integrated biorefinery systems’ (EPOBIO 2006, p. 34). Thus plants must be redesigned as more readily degradable
biomass.
As a greater ambition, an ‘integrated diversified biorefinery’ would convert biomass
into various industrial products. These strategies attempt to optimize valuable products
from novel inputs, e.g. to ‘develop new trees and other plant species chosen as energy
and/or fibre sources, including plantations connected to biorefineries’, according to the
Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTP 2008, SRA-23, 24). Its precursor organization had
drawn an analogy between plant material and crude oil: ‘New developments are ongoing for transforming the biomass into a liquid “biocrude”, which can be further refined,
used for energy production or sent to a gasifier’ (Biofrac 2006, p. 21). By projecting a
decomposability paradigm onto natural resources, the bio-crude metaphor naturalizes the
use and redesign of plants as functional substitutes for fossil fuels, towards horizontally
integrating agriculture with other industries, as a path towards sustainable development.
In this eco-efficiency scenario, waste can be successively turned into raw materials for
the next stage: ‘It will be necessary to optimise closed-loop cycles and biorefinery concepts for the use of wastes and residues in order to develop advanced biomass conversion
technology’, according to the biofuel industry (EBTP 2010, p. 16). Agriculture becomes
a biomass producer; residues become waste biomass for industrial processes and recycling; bio-refineries will process biomass into a diverse range of eco-efficient and therefore
environmentally sustainable products.
New bio-based industrial products are meant to comprise a broad sector aiming to
replace oil with biomass feedstock, to be converted more efficiently, sustainably and
lucratively. For example, R&D seeks ‘closed loop biorefineries that produce no waste’
(SusChem 2005, p. 26), while also seeking an advantage in future value chains:
In Europe we have different companies developing the feedstock, the enzymes, the polymers,
etc. – different stakeholders across the value chain. European companies are investing abroad
in a specific aspect of the value chain . . . European companies would like to stay here but
are active everywhere, wherever it is competitive to produce their products. They are global
players. (Interview, SusChem, 29 July 2010)
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
54
L. Levidow et al.
Through global horizontal integration across multiple industries and partners, value chains
become even longer than in the agro-food feed system, thus multiplying competitive
tensions within Europe as well as cooperative opportunities globally. To enhance these
opportunities, this agenda advocates several policy changes – e.g. easier means to obtain
patents on ‘biotechnological inventions’, especially with EU-wide legal force, higher EUwide targets for biofuels, and public procurement criteria favoring ‘green’ products (e.g.
Biofrac 2006, Plants for the Future TP2007b, DG Enterprise 2009).
As an economic imaginary, the ‘value chains’ concept forms the basis for mobilizing financial and political investment in R&D. Biotech is promoted as a prime tool and
beneficiary, especially as a means to capture market value. Patents are cited as a key benchmark for Europe’s knowledge base and for its place in global competition. For example,
‘Knowledge and intellectual property will be critical to fulfilling the goals outlined in the
other four challenges’ (Plants for the Future TP 2007a, p. 9). Patents are presumed as a
means to gain and protect income from new scientific knowledge, especially for biological
resources which are otherwise freely reproducible by farmers for re-use and exchange.
However, tensions arise between proprietary versus public-access knowledge; rivalry
for patents could deter research partnerships (interviews, DG Research-E/FAFB,
10 October 2008, 4 March 2009). To bypass such rivalry, proposals emphasize cooperation
for generic knowledge: ‘To avoid IPR [intellectual property right] issues, such [knowledge]
networks are best used in the development of less commercially sensitive information
such as life-cycle analysis, performance data and assessment of best available technology’,
according to the Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTP 2008, p. SDD-5).
In this vision, common benefits are expected for a European economic community competing against foreign rivals. Representing the more industrialized farmers, the
Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations (COPA) has asserted ‘that new technologies must be an important part of the European research effort, with biotechnology
as one of the cornerstones’ (COPA 2004, p. 4). It has supported biotech as a route to
novel techniques for farmers to reduce their input costs and increase productivity. COPA
originally supported ETPs in 2005 but played a minimal role in shaping their R&D
agendas.
A few years later, COPA expressed doubts about a future KBBE benefiting European
farmers. In particular, the presumed ‘common vision’ sits uneasily with primary producers
at the bottom of future value chains. For example, bio-refineries might import biomass
from the cheapest sources, or they might be sited near those sources outside Europe.
To gain from adding value to natural resources, a French farmers’ cooperative has sought
partnerships with public sector research institutes developing crops for non-food uses
(e.g. bio-plastics) and/or crops needing special cultivation methods; but the private sector has little interest or capacity to develop such novel crops (interview, COPA, 26 August
2010). These difficulties manifest inherent tensions between capital-intensive industries
and farmers, i.e. between upper and lower parts of global value chains. Such tensions are
smoothed over by socio-technical and economic imaginaries underpinning the dominant
KBBE narrative, e.g. the race for ‘European competitiveness’.
4.2. Funding the life sciences
How did EU research priorities respond to ETPs’ proposals? From its average annual
budget of C200 million, the FAFB program has allocated approximately one-quarter to
Activity 2.3: ‘Life sciences, biotechnology and biochemistry for sustainable non-food
products and processes’.
Critical Policy Studies
55
As that title indicates, biotech research was largely shifted to non-food uses, including
energy and other industrial products; biotech had a less prominent role in the food-related
activity. ‘Life sciences’ priorities emphasize molecular-level changes in plants, especially
as the means to link environmental with economic sustainability. For example:
Plants can act as cheap, renewable ‘factories’ for the production of chemicals, recombinant
proteins and industrial raw materials of value to a wide range of non-food industrial sectors,
at the same time improving their environmental and economic potential. (DG Research/FAFB
2006b, p. 47)
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
From the start, the FAFB program emphasized life sciences and converging technologies,
especially as a means to identify biological characteristics which could enhance value
chains in future markets.
In the KBBE concept, knowledge refers to convergence of technologies – bio, info, nanotech,
cognitive sciences. Their convergence is necessary in order to identify, standardise and so
guarantee the composition of products at the molecular level. Such reliability also links with
economy and market value. (Interview, DG Research-E/FAFB, 24 November 2009)
The pervasive adjective ‘green’ means plants providing substances which can replace fossil
fuels and thus enhance sustainability. For example, the call for research on ‘Green Oils’
aims to develop ‘market driven, hardy, viable and profitable oil seed crops with enhanced
traits derived from conventional and biotechnological breeding techniques which exploit
the post genomic knowledge base’ (DG Research 2006, p. 45). Here green and natural
mean any product of biological processes.
Eco-efficient innovations also aim to integrate agriculture with biofuel production and
thus expand available resources. Efforts to break down plant cell walls are expected to
bring profits and save resources:
We have a technological priority with cellulose. We are looking at ways to get access to the
cellulose within the cell structure. We are looking at microbes that can access the cellulose
easily; such microbes would be an El Dorado. Then you don’t have to take potential food
crops and use them for fuels – which is wrong and ultimately not sustainable. (Interview, DG
Research-E/FAFB, 23 October 2009)
R&D priorities expect such economic and environmental benefits, thanks to converging technologies which can generate novel data on genetic characteristics, standardize
them and link them with valuable substances. These agendas are naturalized through
anthropomorphic metaphors of nature, e.g. metabolic engineering will enhance knowledge
for ‘green factories’ to provide efficient engineering of high-yield and quality products;
research will expand the biochemical diversity of natural product libraries; biocatalytic processes will provide high efficiency and low environmental impacts; modern biotechnology
will provide systemics for cataloguing and therefore preserving microbial diversity, etc.
(DG Research/FAFB 2008). Thus R&D priorities coincide closely with strategic research
agendas of ETPs, e.g. Plants for the Future.
Such priorities and expectations elaborate a decomposability paradigm as a means to
substitute renewable resources for synthetic chemicals, as in examples above. Through
converging technologies, the R&D aims:
56
L. Levidow et al.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
to improve the productivity and composition of raw materials and bio-mass feedstocks for
optimised conversion to high added-value products including biological resources utilisable
in pharmaceutical industry and medicine, while exploiting natural or enhanced terrestrial and
aquatic organisms as novel sources. (DG Research/FAFB 2008, p. 42)
Along with the FAFB program, the FP7 energy research program has funded a joint call for
proposals on ‘sustainable bio-refineries’, initially offering C80 million total in grants. The
overall program has several aims which include: ‘enhancing energy efficiency, including
by rationalising use and storage of energy; addressing the pressing challenges of security
of supply and climate change, whilst increasing the competitiveness of Europe’s industries’ (DG Research/FAFB 2006a, p. 4). For the latter aim, second generation biofuels are
expected to ‘boost innovation and maintain Europe’s competitive position in the renewable
energy sector’ (CEC 2007a, p. 11). In these ways, agriculture is linked with energy for
proprietary knowledge in global value chains.
Like industry lobbies (EBTP 2008), FP7 favors biomass-to-liquid fuel (BTL) technology for several reasons, complementing the EU’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan
(CEC 2009). BTL offers links with other industries and export markets, as a potential basis
for multiplying value chains. It also complements the existing transport infrastructure, as
emphasized by industry lobbyists:
liquid fuels are the preferred choice for road transport due to their relatively higher energy
density and the fact that their use, particularly as blends, is more compatible with existing
fuel distribution systems and requires little or no modification to power trains. (EBTP 2008,
SRA-1)
In sum, the dominant vision links socio-technical and economic imaginaries for future
innovations which can sustainably expand current industrial infrastructures, in the name of
sustainable development. This vision dominates FP7 research priorities. Next let us examine how other stakeholders elaborated a rival vision of the KBBE, as a basis for different
R&D priorities.
5. Rival vision: agroecology
Opposing both the agro-industrial system and putative alternatives via life sciences, civil
society networks have promoted different socio-technical and economic imaginaries – e.g.
territorial food cultures, agro-food relocalization and agroecological methods. This vision
was brought together in an alliance formed by numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the European Coordination Via Campesina. Formerly the Coordination
Paysanne, it represents smaller-scale farmers who use fewer external inputs and/or
promote ‘quality’ products recognizable by consumers. According to their common
declarations for European food sovereignty:
The ways in which we grow, distribute, prepare and eat food should celebrate Europe’s cultural diversity, providing sustenance equitably and sustainably . . . e.g. via the production and
consumption of local, seasonal, high quality products reconnecting citizens with their food
and food producers. (EPFS 2009, p. 1)
Agroecological forms of production must be defined as the standard form of production in the
EU. (Food SovCap 2010)
Critical Policy Studies
57
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Likewise many agronomists promote greater self-sufficiency via low-external input methods that enhance ecological processes (Boussard and Trouvé 2010). The above promotional
efforts have been focused on new rules for agricultural subsidy, as a central campaign
activity.
Their agroecological vision corresponds to research priorities which have been
marginal, even locked out of state research programs (Vanloqueren and Baret 2009).
To overcome these barriers, organic farming organizations established a network to advocate agroecological research. Their vision links a socio-technical imaginary where farmers
share knowledge of renewable resources and organic recycling processes, with an economic imaginary where they gain value through lower external inputs and shorter, more
localized food-supply chains.
5.1. Promoting agroecology as eco-efficiency
The organics industry sought to influence research policy, initially by proposing a
Technology Platform for Sustainable Organic and High Welfare Food and Farming
Systems. According to its proposal, such systems ‘are an important and fast-growing part
of the European knowledge-based bio-economy’. The proposal included ‘industry objectives of improving (i) ecological and social sustainability, (ii) food quality and safety, (iii)
production efficiency and profitability and (iv) introduction of innovation’ (IFOAM-EU
Group 2006). Thus it advocated agroecological approaches in ways that recast the KBBE
narrative. Like the proposals for a Technology Platform from capital-intensive industries,
this one was submitted to Framework Programme 6 as a Coordination and Support Action,
but it did not gain a sufficiently high score.
Even without funds or sponsorship from the European Commission, organics promoters built broad stakeholder support including relevant commercial actors across the
agro-food supply chain as well as environmental NGOs. To establish a Technology
Platform Organics, they published a Vision for an Organic Food and Farming Research
Agenda to 2025 (Niggli et al. 2008), by analogy to Vision 2025 documents of officially
recognized ETPs. Key terms from the KBBE narrative were recast to favor agroecology.
For example:
Organic agriculture and food production are innovative learning fields for sustainability and
are therefore of special interest to European societies. . . . In order to maintain a leading position in this innovative political and economic field, research activities are crucial. (Niggli et al.
2008, p. 9)
Like other ETPs, Technology Platform Organics next published a Strategic Research
Agenda, which linked ‘innovation’ with public goods such as ecosystem services, ecoefficiency, farmers’ knowledge, learning and competitive advantage (see Figure 3). Organic
farming achieves the ‘most efficient use of nutrients by keeping their cycles short and as
closed as possible’ (Schmid et al. 2009, p. 23). Its improvement needs a ‘system-based
approach’ including field experiments, farm-level studies, participatory on-farm research
and modeling (Schmid et al. 2009, p. 24).
According to their problem diagnosis, organic farming faces a problem of low
productivity, which can be increased through agroecological engineering, here called
‘eco-functional intensification’:
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
58
L. Levidow et al.
Figure 3. Three themes for organic food and farming research.
Source: TP Organics Strategic Research Agenda (Schmid et al. 2009).
The weakness of organic agriculture so far remains its insufficient productivity and the stability of yields. This could be solved by means of appropriate ‘eco-functional intensification’,
i.e. more efficient use of natural resources, improved nutrient recycling techniques and agroecological methods for enhancing diversity and the health of soils, crops and livestock. (Niggli
et al. 2008, p. 34, cf. Schmid et al. 2009, p. 59)
In those ways, ‘eco-functional intensification’ means intensifying agroecological processes
and thus increasing productivity, without conventionalizing organic farming. An advocate was invited to give a keynote speech at the European Commission’s conference on
sustainable development in a session jointly organized by the Environment and FAFB sections of DG Research (Micheloni 2009). This novel concept gained great interest from
the organics section of COPA, especially as a way for farmers to reduce their input costs;
on this basis, it has advocated ‘a European knowledge sharing and transfer platform for
organic and low-external input farming’ (COPA 2010).
Horizontal integration between agriculture and energy production provides the means
to shorten organic cycles, as well as to substitute local resources for external inputs:
Diversified land use can open up new possibilities for combining food production with
biomass production and on-farm production of renewable energy from livestock manure, small
biotopes, perennial crops and semi-natural non-cultivated areas. Semi-natural grasslands may
be conserved and integrated in stockless farm operations by harvesting biomass for agro/bioenergy and recapturing nutrients from residual effluent for use as supplementary organic
fertiliser on cultivated land. (Schmid et al. 2009, p. 26)
As a socio-economic imaginary of producer cooperation, food relocalization will help
farmers to capture more of the value that they add:
The empowerment of local economies will be an important trend in European agriculture and
food production. . . . New forms of cooperation will create more direct relationships with
consumers, and learning and negotiation will build on and contribute to participatory and
value based research and development activities. This will help to address the challenges of fair
distribution of value along the food supply chain, from both the consumers’ and the producers’
point of view. (Niggli et al. 2008, pp. 29, 30)
Critical Policy Studies
59
In this paradigm, consumer trust depends on a specific product identity, representing comprehensive qualities such as sustainable production methods and/or aesthetic
characteristics (cf. Allaire and Wolf 2004).
In all these ways, TP Organics recast key terms of the KBBE narrative to promote
farmers’ knowledge of biodiversity as resources for agroecological methods and as societal
benefits. TP Organics further elaborated its research proposals in consultation with farmers,
food processors and distributors, partly through Europe-wide consultation meetings. With
that broad support, TP Organics has attempted to influence research agendas, even without
official recognition by the European Commission.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
5.2. Funding agroecology as a knowledge system
An extra opportunity for agroecological research agendas came from policy discussions exploring diverse knowledges for agricultural innovation. The FAFB program has
hosted foresight studies which were commissioned by the EU’s Standing Committee on
Agricultural . According to the first report of the expert group, farmers often develop modest innovations but these are readily dismissed or ignored (SCAR FEG 2007, p. 8). As a
more fundamental problem diagnosis by the expert group, research agendas have become
more distant from producers’ knowledge, instead favoring specialist laboratory knowledge
for agricultural inputs and processing methods (SCAR FEG 2007, p. 11).
As ways forward, the expert group advocated agroecological approaches, in situ genetic
diversity, farmers’ knowledge, etc. (SCAR CEG 2008). It also advocated new kinds of
agricultural knowledge systems (AKSs) beyond the formal research system: ‘The AKSs
that have been developed outside the mainstream, to support organic, fair trade, and
agroecological systems, are identified . . . as meriting greatly increased public and private investment’ (SCAR FEG 2008, 42, also SCAR FEG 2011, pp. 87–89). These official
reports were discussed at Europe-wide conference, highlighting the need for research
valuing farmers’ knowledge of renewable resources.
Going beyond organic agriculture per se, FP7 has given greater prominence to
agroecological research, with calls totaling C20 million by 2010 and increasing thereafter.
These funding calls appear especially within the activity on ‘increased sustainability of all
production systems’ (though some also within ‘socio-economic research and support to
policies’). Agroecology is seen as a means to solve problems of resource shortages and
pollution, as well as to provide public goods such as ecosystem services. According to a
research manager:
Agro-ecology has been included in Framework Programmes as means to address environmental issues through agriculture. It matters for how agriculture is integrated into a wider
ecosystem and environmental life cycle. (interview, DG Research/FAFB, 12 July 2010)
Although the term agroecology does not appear in Commission texts, the FAFB program
has included several agroecological themes: e.g. enhancing soil management and recycling
organic waste via mixed farming, replacing chemical or copper pesticides with biocontrol
agents, enhancing on-farm production of renewable energy, etc. These themes emphasize
substitutes for external inputs, although some calls emphasize the aim to address climate
change by reducing energy inputs. Notably, they have also included knowledge for enhancing market access, e.g. ‘Data network for better European organic market information’ (DG
Research/FAFB 2009, 2010). Moreover the concept ‘eco-functional intensification’ gained
prominence in the 2012 work program, e.g. in a call on ecological services: ‘through the
60
L. Levidow et al.
design of diversified cropping systems it will further help to unlock the potential of ecofunctional intensification to achieve more stable yields and reduce pesticide use while also
meeting environmental objectives’ (DG Research/FAFB 2011, p. 7).
Most of these themes drew upon proposals from TP Organics. This success resulted
partly from their scientific quality, in turn resulting from the networking method, especially
consultations bringing together various experts and practitioners. According to a research
manager:
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
TP Organics operates like a Technology Platform. It brings a sound reflection on research
priorities through stakeholder consultation. Its Strategic Research Agenda has high-quality
proposals, some of which were incorporated into FP7. (Interview, DG Research/FAFB,
5 October 2010)
In those ways, a stakeholder network used a new opportunity in the more favorable context
of the SCAR discussions on sustainable agriculture (e.g. SCAR FEG 2011). Consequently,
FP7 funded research for an agroecological vision linking eco-functional intensification
methods with agro-food-energy relocalization. Eventually ‘ecological intensification’ was
included in the successor to FP7 (CEC 2011, p. 55). This vision gains strength by linking
socio-technical and economic imaginaries.
6. Conclusion: two contending visions of the KBBE
This article has asked questions about the EU’s agenda for a knowledge-based bioeconomy, especially how this defines societal challenges and proposes technoscientific
solutions. To answer these questions, it has combined specific theoretical approaches from
three areas: science and technology studies (Jasanoff and Kim 2009), critical discourse
analysis (Fairclough 2010) and cultural political economy (Jessop 2009). Also drawing on
typologies of agri-innovation paradigms (Allaire and Woolf 2004, Vanloqueren and Baret
2009), our theoretical approach goes beyond the typologies to reveal the cultural construals
of an imaginatively narrated policy process, as summarized in Table 1.
The KBBE has gained prominence as the agricultural research and innovation agenda
of the European Union. As a master narrative, the KBBE concept has served to mobilize
EU institutions around apparently common aims for a future Europe. At the same time,
the KBBE has encompassed two divergent visions of the future. In their own distinctive
ways, each vision has promoted R&D agendas for making agricultural production more
sustainable. These divergent visions are comprised of rival socio-technical and economic
imaginaries – strategic discourses prefiguring a possible, desirable future. Stakeholder networks enact these rival imaginaries – life sciences and agroecology – as strategies to shape
the future.
Each vision links complementary socio-technical and economic aspects. The theoretical concept ‘socio-technical imaginaries’ originally meant to explain how national
technoscientific projects gain legitimacy as means to a good society (Jasanoff and Kim
2009). Here the concept has been extended to a future Europe according to rival visions
of the KBBE. The concept ‘economic imaginaries’ meant to explain how some potential, imagined relations become materialized in economic relations. In the KBBE case,
such imaginaries inform future-oriented strategies to gain policy support and material
investment for specific R&D priorities, alongside wider policies such as rules for agricultural subsidy, patents and public procurement. Together these efforts promote particular
technoscientific paradigms and societal futures.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Critical Policy Studies
61
Each vision also combines paradigms of agricultural innovation with strategies for
gaining market value. In the dominant vision of the life sciences, converging technologies complement decomposability for extending global value chains. In a rival vision,
agroecology complements integral product integrity for short supply chains, also known
as relocalization (Table 1, bottom).
Claiming to promote ‘sustainable agriculture’, each vision appropriates and recasts key
terms in its own image. An agroecological vision originally promoted holistic approaches
as mixed farms integrating crops and animals, while a life sciences vision has recast ‘holistic’ as converging technologies to integrate agriculture with other industrial sectors via
global value chains. Conversely, a life sciences vision has promoted ‘sustainable intensification’, while an agroecological vision has recast this as ‘eco-functional intensification’,
i.e. intensifying ecological processes. Likewise, global business lobbies had long promoted
eco-efficiency as a lower input–output ratio in capital-intensive production processes for
global commodity production, while an agroecological vision has recast eco-efficiency as
short-loop nutrient recycling by farmers. Analyzed as imaginaries, these rival visions likewise give different meanings to the same key terms – knowledge, biological resources and
economy. They diverge over diagnoses of unsustainable agriculture, societal challenges,
remedies through technoscientific knowledge and thus the aims of a knowledge-based
bio-economy.
From the two contending visions, rival stakeholder networks have promoted divergent
research agendas, especially to influence research and innovation policy. In particular, the
EU’s program has aimed to build a particular form of knowledge-based bio-economy, a
concept which informed the EU’s FP7 Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology
program. Accordingly, the FAFB program has favored lab and engineering knowledge
for novel inputs which will make agricultural production more efficient and therefore
sustainable. At the same time, the FAFB program has increasingly promoted agroecological
research, thus overcoming its general lock-out from state research agendas. Alongside
their rivalry for research funds, each stakeholder network also promotes various policies –
e.g. as regards IPRs, ‘green’ public procurement, agricultural subsidy, etc. – which differentially shape market opportunities for the contending visions and their technoscientific
paradigms.
In sum, we developed a hybrid theoretical framework that helps to explain how some
imaginaries are promoted, favored and ‘routinized in organizational operations’, as a basis
for shaping institutional practices and thus societal futures (cf. Jessop 2009). Through
policy frameworks which discursively naturalize technoscientific solutions and designate
external expertise for them, specific future visions are materialized in institutional practices, especially in priorities for research funds. Indeed, having invited and funded ETPs,
the European Commission routinely deferred to them as experts, thus routinizing the life
sciences vision in research agendas. Yet the agroecology vision has also gained a significant
place; this opportunity came from systematic efforts by stakeholder networks, alongside
expert proposals to broaden agricultural knowledge systems.
Meanwhile, through official language about ‘common visions’ for a future Europe,
policy processes downplay tensions and reinforce dominant political–economic actors
as neutral experts. Socio-technical imaginaries cast societal progress as dependent upon
global economic competitiveness. Inequalities are hidden by imagining ‘Europe’ as
a political–economic community competing against foreign rivals (cf. van Apeldoorn
2000). These tensions have been analyzed by linking such concepts from cultural political economy (Jessop 2005) and science and technology studies (Jasanoff and Kim
2009).
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
62
L. Levidow et al.
The KBBE case also exemplifies wider tensions over research agendas for European
progress. According to research ministers, the European Research Area should ‘democratise decision making, for a Science operating as a service to Society’ (EU Council 2008). Its
shape remains ostensibly open by ‘inventing our future together’, according to Commission
policy on the European Research Area. But the same policy invokes global competitiveness
as an objective necessity and rationale for research priorities (CEC 2007b). Consequently,
some pathways are favored and others are marginalized, partly in response to specific
strategies of dominant stakeholder networks (Diedrich et al. 2011).
According to some critiques, EU innovation policy is a master narrative imposing specific problem diagnoses and solutions, while pre-empting alternatives (Felt et al. 2007).
To some extent, this critique describes ETPs’ roles in the KBBE area. However, its research
priorities have been somewhat opened up to different problem-diagnoses, visions and
agri-innovation pathways. Such openings depend upon stakeholder coalitions devising
intervention strategies, building coalitions for alternative agendas and stimulating debate
on policy choices.
As in this case study, critical discourse analysis can sharpen and inform such debate.
Our analysis effectively intervened in discussions among research managers, e.g. at
SCAR events and our project workshop (CREPE 2010). Our research cooperation with
civil society organizations informed their strategies for alternative agendas (Levidow and
Oreszczyn 2012). For example, points from our analysis appeared in stakeholder documents criticizing the dominant agenda and promoting alternatives (e.g. TP Organics 2011a,
2011b).
Our approach has wider implications for policymaking, R&D strategies and critical interventions into such processes. When a policy framework expresses or solicits a
‘common vision’ for research priorities towards ‘sustainable development’, this implies a
process generating a coherent, consensual agenda. Yet such policy language conceals tensions among stakeholder aims – in this case, between the dominant life sciences vision and
the rival agroecology vision – and even tensions within each one. Moreover, each vision
abstracts from complex extra economic conditions necessary for the success of technoscientific solutions, as well as from societal conflicts around them (cf. Jessop 2005, 2009). Our
theoretical framework has helped to illuminate those strategies, abstractions and tensions.
Acknowledgements
Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh
Framework Programme under grant agreement n◦ 217647, entitled ‘Co-operative Research on
Environmental Problems in Europe’ (CREPE) during 2008–10. For helpful comments on previous versions, we thank the CREPE project partners, our advisors (Helen Holder, Piet Schenkelaars,
Silvio Funtowicz and Richard Worthington), numerous attendees at relevant events, Bob Jessop and
anonymous referees of this journal.
Notes on contributors
Les Levidow is a senior research fellow at the Open University, UK, where he has been studying
agri-environmental issues since the late 1980s. A long-running case study has been the AgBioTech
controversy, focusing on the European Union, United States and their trade conflicts. This research
was summarized in three special issues of journals, as well as two co-authored books: Governing the
transatlantic conflict over agricultural biotechnology: contending coalitions, trade liberalisation and
standard setting (Routledge, 2006); and GM food on trial: testing European democracy (Routledge,
2010).
Critical Policy Studies
63
Kean Birch is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Science (Business and Society
Program) at York University, Toronto. His current research interests range from the emerging bioeconomy to varieties of neoliberal restructuring. With Vlad Mykhnenko he co-edited The rise and
fall of neoliberalism (Zed, 2010).
Theo Papaioannou is a senior lecturer in innovation and politics of development at the ESRC Centre
for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics (Innogen) and in the Development
Policy and Practice Group (DPP) at the Open University, UK. He has researched and published
extensively in the areas of innovation, politics and development. His recent co-authored publications
include The limits to governance: the challenge of policy-making for the new life sciences (Ashgate,
2009).
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
References
Aho Report, 2006. Creating an innovative Europe [online]. Report of the Independent Expert Group
on R&D and Innovation appointed following the Hampton Court Summit and chaired by Mr
Esko Aho. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/aho_report.
pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
Allaire, G. and Wolf, S., 2004. Cognitive representations and institutional hybridity in agrofood
innovation. Science, technology and human values, 29 (4), 431–458.
Becoteps, 2011. The European bioeconomy in 2030: delivering sustainable growth by addressing
the grand societal challenges. Available from: http://www.plantetp.org/images/stories/stories/
documents_pdf/brochure_web.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
Biofrac, 2006. Biofuels in the European Union: a vision for 2030 and beyond. Final draft report of
the Biofuels Research Advisory Council.
BioMat Net, 2006. 1st International Biorefinery Workshop (website now defunct).
Boussard, J.-M. and Trouvé, A., 2010. Proposal for a new European agriculture and food policy
that meets the challenges of this century [online]. Available from: http://www.eurovia.org/IMG/
article_PDF_article_a337.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
CEC, 1993. Growth, competitiveness and employment: the challenges and ways forward into the 21st
century. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities.
CEC, 1998. Review of the 5th Environmental Action Programme. Brussels: Commission of the
European Communities.
CEC, 2007a. Biofuels progress report: Report on the progress made in the use of biofuels and other
renewable fuels in the member states of the European Union, SEC(2006) 1721.
CEC, 2007b. Inventing our future together: the European Research Area: new perspectives, EUR
22840.
CEC, 2009. Questions and answers on the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan)
and its financing, MEMO/09/437.
CEC, 2010. Report from the Commission on indirect land-use change related to biofuels and
bioliquids, COM(2010) 811 final.
CEC, 2011. Proposal for a Council decision establishing the Specific Programme Implementing
Horizon 2020 – The Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014–2020),
COM(2011) 811 final, 30 November.
Clever Consult BVBA, 2010. The knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE) in Europe: achievements
and challenges. Study prepared for the Belgian Presidency conference of the EU Council.
Brussels: Flemish Government with the European Commission. Available from: http://www.
bio-economy.net/reports/files/KBBE_2020_BE_presidency.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
COPA, 2004. Remarks and suggestions concerning the 7th Research Framework Programme.
Brussels: Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations.
COPA, 2010. Research proposals to Technology Platform Organics. Personal correspondence,
September.
CREPE, 2010. Workshop report: what knowledge for sustainable agriculture? What bio-economy for
Europe? [online]. Available from: http://crepeweb.net/?page_id=355 [Accessed 24 December
2011].
DG Enterprise, 2009. Taking bio-based from promise to market: measures to promote the market introduction of innovative bio-based products. Brussels: Commission of the European
Communities.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
64
L. Levidow et al.
DG Research, 2005. New perspectives on the knowledge-based bio-economy: conference report.
Brussels: DG Research, European Commission.
DG Research, 2007. Third status report on European technology platforms at the launch of FP7.
Brussels: DG Research, EUR 22706
DG Research/FAFB, 2006a. FP7 Theme 5: Energy, 2007 work programme.
DG Research/FAFB, 2006b. FP7 Theme 2: Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology, 2007 work
programme.
DG Research/FAFB, 2008. FP7 Theme 2: Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology, 2009 work
programme.
DG Research/FAFB, 2009. FP7 Theme 2: Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology, 2010 work
programme.
DG Research/FAFB, 2010. FP7 Theme 2: Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology, 2011 work
programme.
DG Research/FAFB, 2011. FP7 Theme 2: Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology, 2012 work
programme.
Diedrich, A. et al., 2011. Framing environmental sustainability challenges for research and innovation in European policy agendas, Environmental science and policy, 11 (8), 935–939. Available
from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901111001328 [Accessed 24
December 2011].
EBTP, 2008. European biofuels technology platform: strategic research agenda & strategy deployment document. Newbury: CPL Press.
EBTP, 2010. Strategic research agenda 2010 update: innovation driving sustainable biofuels
[online]. European Biofuels Technology Platform. Available from: http://www.biofuelstp.
eu/srasdd/SRA_2010_update_web.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
EC, 2009. Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on
the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and amending and subsequently
repealing Directives 2001/77/EC and 2003/30/EC Renewable Energy Directive, O.J. L 140:
16–62, 5 June.
EPFS, 2009. European food declaration: towards a healthy, sustainable, fair and mutually
supportive Common Agriculture and Food policy [online]. European Platform for Food
Sovereignty. Available from: http://www.europeanfooddeclaration.org/declaration/en [Accessed
24 December 2011].
EPOBIO, 2006. Products from plants – the biorefinery future. Outputs from the EPOBIO Workshop,
Wageningen, 22–24 May. Available from: http://www.epobio.net/workshop0605.htm [Accessed
24 December 2011].
EPSO/DG Research, 2004. Plants for the future: 2025 a European vision for plant genomics and
biotechnology. Brussels: European Plant Science Organisation.
EU Council, 2000. An agenda of economic and social renewal for Europe (aka Lisbon Agenda).
Brussels, European Council, DOC/00/7.
EU Council, 2007. Treaty of Lisbon amending the treaty on European Union and the treaty establishing the European Community, signed at Lisbon. Official journal of the European Union C 306:
1–271, 17 December.
EU Council, 2008. European Research Area Vision 2020. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/
research/era/pdf/era_vision_2020_en.pdf [Accessed 15 February 2012].
EU Presidency, 2007. En route to the knowledge-based bio-economy. Cologne Summit of the German
Presidency, EU Council.
Fairclough, N., 2010. Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. 2nd ed. London:
Pearson.
FAO, 2009. Global agriculture towards 2050. Paper presented to high-level expert forum on ‘How
to feed the world in 2050’, Rome, Italy, 12–13 October. Available from: http://www.fao.org/
fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf.
Felt, U. et al., 2007. Science and governance: taking European knowledge society seriously. Brussels:
European Commission, EUR 22700.
Food SovCap, 2010. The missing option for the Common Agricultural Policy post-2013. Brussels:
European Movement for Food Sovereignty and Another CAP. Available from: http://www.
eurovia.org/spip.php?article412 [Accessed 24 December 2011].
Geoghegan-Quinn, M., 2010. Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, ‘Bioeconomy
for a better life’. Conference on the Knowledge-based bio-economy towards 2020, Brussels,
14 September.
Downloaded by [Open University] at 08:50 30 April 2012
Critical Policy Studies
65
IFOAM-EU Group, 2006. Technology platform for sustainable organic and high welfare food and
farming systems. Proposal to the European Commission for a specific support action SSA.
Jasanoff, S. and Kim, S.-H., 2009. Containing the atom: sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear
power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva, 47, 119–146.
Jessop, B., 2005. Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy, and the state. In: A.
Barry and D. Slater, eds. The technological economy. London: Routledge, 144–166.
Jessop, B., 2009. Cultural political economy and critical policy studies. Critical policy studies, 3
(3–4), 336–356.
Levidow, L. and Oreszczyn, S., 2012. Challenging unsustainable development through research
cooperation. Local environment: the international journal of justice and sustainability, 17 (1),
35–56, DOI:10.1080/13549839.2011.627680.
Micheloni, C., 2009. Ecofunctional intensification. PowerPoint talk in session on ‘Foresight and public goods – a new framing for agricultural research’, conference on Sustainable development – a
challenge for European research, Brussels, 26–28 May.
Niggli, U. et al., 2008. Vision for an organic food and farming research agenda to 2025.
Brussels: IFOAM-EU and FiBL. Available from: http://www.tporganics.eu/upload/TPOrganics_
VisionResearchAgenda.pdf. [Accessed 24 December 2011].
O’Mahony, M. and van Ark, B., eds, 2003. EU productivity and competitiveness: an industry
perspective. Can Europe resume the catching-up process? Brussels: European Commission.
Available from: http://www.pedz.uni-mannheim.de/daten/edz-h/gdb/03/omahony.pdf [Accessed
24 December 2011].
Plants for the Future TP, 2007a. European technology platform plants for the future: strategic
research agenda 2025. Summary. Brussels: European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO).
Plants for the Future TP, 2007b. European technology platform plants for the future: strategic
research agenda 2025. Part II. Brussels: EPSO.
Rosamond, B., 2002. Imagining the European economy: ‘Competitiveness’ and the social construction of Europe as an economic space. New political economy, 7 (2), 157–177.
Royal Society, 2009. Reaping the benefits: science and the sustainable intensification of global
agriculture. London: Royal Society.
SCAR FEG, 2007. FFRAF report: foresighting food, rural and agri-futures. Brussels: Standing
Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR), Foresight Expert Group. Available from: http://
ec.europa.eu/research/agriculture/scar/foresight_en.htm [Accessed 24 December 2011].
SCAR FEG, 2008. 2nd foresight exercise: new challenges for agricultural research: climate change,
food security, rural development, agricultural knowledge systems. Brussels: Standing Committee
on Agricultural Research (SCAR), Foresight Expert Group.
SCAR FEG, 2011. 3rd SCAR foresight exercise: sustainable food consumption and production in a resource-constrained world. Brussels: Standing Committee on Agricultural
Research, Foresight Expert Group. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/research/agriculture/scar/
pdf/scar_feg3_final_report_01_02_2011.pdf.
Schmid, O. et al., 2009. Strategic research agenda for organic food and farming. Brussels:
Technology Platform Organics. Available from: http://www.tporganics.eu/upload/tporganics_
strategicresearchagenda.pdf [Accessed 24 December 2011].
Schmidheiny, S., 1992. Changing course – a global business perspective on development and the
environment. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Business Council for
Sustainable Development.
Sum, N.L., 2009. The production of hegemonic policy discourses: ‘competitiveness’ as a knowledge
brand and its (re-)contextualizations. Critical policy studies, 3 (2), 184–203.
SusChem, 2005. Innovating for a better future. Sustainable chemistry strategic research agenda 2005.
Brussels: European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry.
TP Organics, 2011a. Response to the Commission’s consultation on the ‘Bio-based economy for
Europe: state of play and future potential’. Brussels: Technology Platform Organics.
TP Organics, 2011b. Response to the Commission’s questionnaire on the ‘Green Paper on a common
strategic framework for EU research and innovation funding’. Brussels: Technology Platform
Organics.
van Apeldoorn, B., 2000. Transnational class agency and European governance: the case of the
European Roundtable of Industrialists. New political economy, 5 (2), 157–181.
Vanloqueren, G. and Baret, P.V., 2009. How agricultural research systems shape a technological
regime that develops genetic engineering but locks out agroecological innovations. Research
policy, 38 (6), 971–983.