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Sean Gillon
To cite this article: Sean Gillon (2016) Flexible for whom? Flex crops, crises, fixes and the politics
of exchanging use values in US corn production, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43:1, 117-139,
DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.996555
Flexible for whom? Flex crops, crises, fixes and the politics of
exchanging use values in US corn production
Sean Gillon
Flexible allocation of crops among food and non-food uses is a key driver of global agri-
food system change. Focusing on United States corn production, I explore the dynamics
of flex crops, scrutinizing agri-industrial relationships and the distribution of agri-food
system value and control. I situate crop flexing as exchanging use value, as opposed to
converting use into exchange value without altering the commodity’s use. Asking
‘Flexible for whom?’ in the context of agri-food system crises, I find: (1) flex crops
exacerbate contradictory food security and over supply crises, and that the
distribution of flexibility and benefit in the agri-food system they provide depends on
the organization of labor; (2) crises of accumulation tie flex crops to agri-food system
financialization, which subordinates use to exchange value, obfuscating their
relationship and distancing agricultural products and uses from their basis in nature
and labor; and (3) debates over US corn flexing illustrate the utility of focusing on
power and politics in crop flexing decisions and demonstrate US corn flexing to be a
fix for climate and accumulation crises. Findings suggest that examining the
distribution of value and control and the positions of labor and nature in the agri-food
system may be productive for global flex crop research and advocacy in the future.
Keywords: flex crops; value; food crises; US agriculture; corn; biofuels; ethanol
1. Introduction
The agri-food system has recently undergone massive and widespread but uneven changes
globally, as evidenced by recent and multiple food crises, food rebellions and food move-
ments (Holt-Giménez and Shattuck 2011; Bush 2010). Millions go hungry or are malnour-
ished and the number of food insecure has risen globally through recent crises and more
Editorial Note: The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) is publishing several exploratory papers on flex
crops and commodities (JPS flex crops special forum). The purpose of the forum is to help generate
systematic discussion on the idea and phenomenon of flex crops as a step towards identifying a poss-
ible future research agenda. There are several papers in this forum, including: (i) the introductory and
framing paper by Borras, Franco, Isakson, Levidow and Vervest, (ii) Gillon on corn, (iii) McKay,
Sauer, Richardson, and Herre on sugarcane, (iv) Schneider and Oliveira on soya, (v) Alonso-Fradejas,
Juan, Salerno and Xu on oil palm, and (vii) Hunsberger and Alonso-Fradejas on policy narratives. JPS
would like to acknowledge the important intellectual and logistical contributions by the Agrarian,
Food and Environmental Studies group at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, www.
iss.nl/afes) as well as the Transnational Institute (TNI, www.tni.org), which jointly organized the
initial research and authors’ workshop that helped shape the papers in this forum.
persistent trends (FAO 2009; FAO et al. 2014; Allen 2013; Maye and Kirwan 2013). Agri-
food industries have consolidated economic power (Lang 2010; Van der Ploeg 2010), while
food system laborers continue to occupy marginalized positions (Isakson 2014). Race, class
and gender inequalities continue to be pervasive in the food system (Allen and Sachs 2007;
Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Slocum and Saldanha 2013). In short, visions for global food
sovereignty have yet to be realized, despite recent crises that evidence the need for systemic
global food system change (Hospes 2014; Sage 2013). In many ways, these crises are a pre-
dictable outgrowth of longstanding patterns of agri-food system development geared
toward maximizing food’s exchange value at the expense of tending to food’s importance
as a basic human need (McMichael 2009; McMichael 2012; Lang 2010; Van der Ploeg
2010).
Flexible allocation of crops among food and non-food uses is one key proximate driver
of these changes and is the issue the contributions in this collection address. Here, I focus on
flexing corn into ethanol in the United States (US). Among the flexible uses to which agri-
cultural produce is being put, biofuels rank high in volume and consequence. The increas-
ing use of agricultural produce for biofuels has exacerbated many contemporary agri-food
system crises, including global food insecurity (McMichael 2009; Bello 2009; Jonasse
2009), the conditions of food system labor (White and Dasgupta 2010; Hunsberger et al.
2014), and rapid land use and ecological change (Searchinger et al. 2008; Fargione et al.
2008; Stuart and Gillon 2013). Despite ongoing efforts to envision and enact ‘sustainable
biofuels’, biofuel production and use remain mired by ‘persistent shortcomings in addres-
sing social and livelihood issues’ (Hunsberger and Ponte 2014, 244; Hunsberger et al.
2014).
Given biofuel production’s apparent consequences, biofuels and the bio-economies
within which they are situated have received growing attention from scholars and activists
(see special collections introduced by Borras, McMichael, and Scoones 2010; Ponte and
Birch 2014; Hunsberger and Ponte 2014). Many of these important analytical efforts,
however, engage emerging biofuel production as a distinct sector, in isolation from a par-
ticular crop’s multiple other uses and the degree to which a crop is flexibly allocated among
these uses. Borras et al. (2015) suggest, for example, ‘A narrow focus on the biofuel-planta-
tion link weakens policy analysis and public action’ (3), and ‘simplification of an increas-
ingly complex issue – by continuing to deploy conventional concepts and analytical lenses
– in terms of academic research and political advocacy work is increasingly becoming pro-
blematic’ (4). This collection’s analyses of ‘flex crops’ collectively suggest that rather than
analyzing crop production and agri-food systems’ outcomes according to separate crop
uses, it will be productive to examine how particular crops come to be flexibly used for
multiple purposes, as well as the consequences of changing the objectives of agricultural
production – that is, by asking about the social, political economic and ecological circum-
stances under which agricultural produce comes to be used for food, fuel, animal feed or
something else.
‘Flex crops’ can thus be defined as ‘crops and commodities that have multiple uses (i.e.,
food, feed, fuel, industrial material) that can be, or are thought to be, flexibly inter-changed’
(Borras et al. 2015, 1). Major crops targeted for maximizing flexible use include corn, soy,
sugarcane and oil palm, with others in developmental stages. In each case, a more flexible
crop provides a seemingly elegant solution for navigating multiple, volatile markets for
crops in the context of crises. But flex crops also have the potential to create major disrup-
tions in efforts to achieve food security and sovereignty. The forms and functions, as well as
causes and consequences, of flex crops are multiple. To parse these, Borras et al. (2015)
describe two key analytical categories for considering flex crops: (1) multipleness, or the
The Journal of Peasant Studies 119
extent to which a particular crop can be directed toward multiple uses; and (2) flexibleness,
or the degree to which the multiple uses of a crop can be interchangeably realized. The
authors illustrate that not all crops have a multiplicity of uses to facilitate flexing, and
that flexing crops with multiple uses is an ongoing, partial and often aspirational endeavor.
These frames can provide leverage for understanding flex crops writ large, but detailed ana-
lyses will be necessary to uncover the political economic, social-ecological and cultural
dynamics that underpin crop flexing, or, as I elaborate, the exchange of use value.
As a contribution to this collection on flex crops, this paper offers an analysis of US corn
flexing to explore potential analytical approaches. I focus on questions that may be produc-
tively applied in other contexts: How can the emergence of flex crops be situated histori-
cally? What constellation of political economic and social-ecological factors has led to
the emergence of flex crops? For whom are flex crops flexible? Who decides which
crops are flexed into what, when and why? Where is the locus of power for determining
a crop’s use as food, fuel, fiber or something else, and how are these decisions negotiated
in practice? When crops are flexed, who benefits and loses? These are likely to be key ques-
tions for future analyses and advocacy around the roles of flex crops in agri-food systems.
Each of this paper’s sections, which are outlined in what follows, addresses different
aspects of these questions. In the next section, I draw on analyses in agricultural political
economy that scrutinize tendencies in agri-industrial relationships and their consequences
for the organization of agricultural production, agri-food system control and value distri-
bution, and food security. I explain why drawing analytical attention to agri-industrial
relationships, control and value distribution, and the roles of labor and nature as the
basis of value may be particularly important for future research and advocacy.
The remainder of the contribution is organized around agri-food systems-related crises
to which flex crops both contribute and respond. These crises include contradictory food
price and over-supply crises, more generalized crises of accumulation that intersect with
agri-food systems, and climate and energy crises. While crop flexing may not be entirely
new, flex crops’ emergence in contemporary crisis-ridden contexts merits attention.
Borras et al. (2015, 3) write,
There is nothing new about the fact that most crops and commodities have multiple uses. …
What we would like to explore more deeply here is the phenomenon of the global commercial
expansion of flex crops along the lines of the very specific purposes provoked by the current
convergence of multiple crises.
In the third section, I focus on crises in US agricultural production and supply, connecting
them to crop flexing and global food crises. I articulate how the answer to the question
‘Flexible for whom?’ depends on the social capacity to influence the distribution of
value and control in flex crop supply chains. In the US, producers moved from class-
based politics focused on broader political economic conditions of production that united
their interests against industry toward commodity-based advocacy, which limits the oppor-
tunity for collective reform of agri-food system ownership and value distribution. In this
case, the flexibility and benefits provided by flex crops accrue to industry.
In the fourth section, I describe US corn flexing’s intersections with broader political
economic crises of accumulation and the dynamics of financial capital that increasingly
influence the agri-food system. I preliminarily sketch connections between flex crops and
speculative investment in farmland, commodities and infrastructure by reviewing recent lit-
erature on the topics. This analysis describes how a new set of financial institutions and
actors influences the distribution of value and mediates the exchange of both exchange
120 Sean Gillon
and use values. Agri-food system financialization’s connections to flex crops are explored
to better understand how each affects agri-food system markets, infrastructure, and land
ownership and use dynamics. In the fifth section of the paper, I explore flex crops’ connec-
tions to climate and energy crises through current debates over how flexible US corn is and
should be, illustrating the utility of focusing research on decisions over flexible crops’ best
use, or the micro-politics of flexing. Here, I describe debates over corn flexing that reveal
corn ethanol’s status as an ‘environmental fix’ (Castree 2008; Gillon 2010). In the context
of multiple crises, the flexibleness of corn in the US has become a political struggle among
the winners and losers of flexing. This section helps answer the question ‘Flexible for
whom?’ by illustrating how decisions to flex crops are made. I conclude the paper by
suggesting that, together, these crisis-based analyses point to several key topics and an
analytical approach rooted in the distribution of value and control in the agri-food
system that may be useful for future research and advocacy around flex crops.
Agriculture-industry relations are fraught with barriers to integration as well as tensions and
contestation over the distribution of value, and economic and decision-making power, in
commodity supply chains. Many of these tensions revolve around the status of nature
and labor in agri-food systems.
Agricultural political economists recognized agriculture as less amenable to capitalist
development than industrial activities, posing profitability challenges for producers and
industry alike. Mann and Dickinson (1978), for example, explained the specific challenges
to capitalist development that agriculture posed due to its basis in nature, its use of labor and
its resultant obstacles to the efficient circulation of capital (see FitzSimmons 1986). Both
the barriers and keys to profitability for industry in agriculture are based in labor and
nature, indicative of Marx’s (1976[1867], 638) oft-cited assertion that
...all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but
of robbing the soil … . The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the back-
ground of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this process
of destruction. Capitalist production … only develops … the social process of production by
simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.
As I describe, labor and nature circulate together in industrialized agriculture and crop
flexing, determined in large part by agri-industrial relations; keeping this in mind can
provide a conceptual basis for flex crop analyses. While here I outline general tendencies
in agri-industrialization and the importance of focusing on value’s basis in nature and
labor, more specific interpretations should be elaborated in other flex crop and agri-food
systems contexts. Moving from abstractions of labor and nature, in general, to concrete situ-
ations and subjects will be important for understanding and influencing agri-food systems’
evolving gender, race and class dimensions (see Ekers and Loftus 2013).
More than 25 years ago, Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson (1987) drew on these insights
to articulate two key concepts describing agri-industrial development helpful for contextua-
lizing emerging crop flexing politics and practice and the exchange of use value in particu-
lar contexts. Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson’s (1987) twin concepts of appropriationism
and substitutionism describe methodologies used by industrial capital to appropriate
labor- and nature-based barriers to profitability in agriculture. To begin, appropriationism
is the ‘discontinuous but persistent undermining of discrete elements of the agricultural pro-
duction process, their transformation into industrial activities, and their reincorporation into
agriculture as inputs’ (Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson 1987, 2). Industrial actors and their
capital seek to transform agriculture into a center for profit by overcoming labor- and
nature-based barriers to accumulation in agricultural production. This, the authors
explain, was initially achieved through mechanization of agricultural production (reducing
obstacles to profitability posed by land and the spatial extent of agricultural production),
and, later, through the application of chemical and biological technologies to increase agri-
cultural productivity. The industrial production and sale of tractors, fertilizers and patented
seed varieties as purchased inputs (as exchange value) to producers, who previously sup-
plied their own labor and relied on nature-based processes to satisfy these functional
needs (as use values), created a new revenue stream for industry and increased farm pro-
ductivity. The quintessential example of appropriationism is, perhaps, the development
and use of high-yielding crop varieties, where industry developed new crop varieties appro-
priating plant evolutionary processes based on knowledge generated from public plant-
breeding research (Kloppenburg 2004 [1988]). High-yielding varieties more efficient in
converting soil nutrients and sunlight into plant matter appropriated biological processes
122 Sean Gillon
by speeding up production cycles, and appropriated human labor, replacing farm labor
investments in seed reproduction and diverse agroecological production strategies.
Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson (1987, 3) summarize: ‘In effect, the process of natural
reproduction of plants and animals [was] internalized via science in the reproduction of
industrial capitals’. Mechanization circumvented the challenges of agriculture’s basis in
land, while chemical and biological technologies aimed to maximize the efficiency of bio-
logical production cycles. ‘Appropriationism thus describes the constant restructuring of
rural production processes as these capitals exploit further opportunities for accumulation’
(Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson 1987, 3). Illustrating these trends, Cochrane (1979, 132)
writes, ‘man-made [sic] capital substituted for human labor to an extent that would not
have been thought possible at the beginning of the period [1933–1970].’ These processes,
of course, connect to a whole host of global political economic dynamics in the production
and distribution of food that impact food security, including green revolution technologies,
food aid and export market development (Friedmann and McMichael 1989; Patel 2013).
In the context of flex crops, these agri-industrial tendencies emerge again; appropria-
tionist tendencies are deepened as new seed technologies are developed and industrial agri-
cultural production expands to facilitate crop flexing. Crop biotechnology industries, for
example, developed crop varieties that would be more efficient inputs for flexing into
biofuel, in particular. Monsanto’s Processor Preferred variety, Syngenta’s Enogen
variety, and the Cargill–Monsanto joint venture Renessen’s variety, Mavera High-Value
Corn, demonstrate these agri-industrial investments. Once planted, however, a producer
loses the flexibility to decide to which markets they might sell (Shattuck 2009). Considering
the question ‘Flexible for whom?’ here, flex crop production results in a reduction of flexi-
bility for the grower and increased opportunity for the processor to capture value as the
crop’s use value is exchanged and the flex crop commodity sold. The processor,
however, may not be required to purchase the inflexible crop variety, still retaining its
power as purchaser to decide whether, when and for how much to purchase particular
flex crops for particular uses, illustrating how supply chain flexibility and control are con-
tingent on the roles and relative power of those involved.
A second, broader key point here is that the farm-based technological capacity to
produce flex crops has industrial origins, positioning agricultural industry as a key actor
for ongoing analysis. In short, investments in research and development and ownership
of technology in agricultural production are one key area to focus on in future analyses
and advocacy detailing the causes and consequences of crop flexing. Again, these issues
influence the distribution of value (and, thus, the roles of labor and nature) in agricultural
product supply chains. The social benefits of these kinds of investments are likely to be
uneven and influenced by agri-industry relations that drive profit and economic power
toward industrial interests in agriculture. Similar examples of industry research and devel-
opment investment in flex crop production may be found in other contexts and may be
informative in answering the questions ‘Flexible for whom?’ and ‘For the benefit of
whom?’
Perhaps more relevant to crop flexing is Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson’s (1987)
second, associated concept, substitutionism. Appropriationism applies to the agricultural
production process, whereas substitutionism mainly pertains to ‘downstream’ processing
of agricultural products. Here, I describe two of substitutionism’s principal tendencies.
First, due to industrial intervention, food products come to be defined by their industrial
attributes, rather than by their farm-based characteristics. For example, particular
methods for milling flour, as opposed to particular characteristics of a wheat variety,
become the definitional character of food. Further, processing is standardized so that
The Journal of Peasant Studies 123
flour, vegetable oil or other agricultural products can be readily used as standardized inputs
for further processing. Primary processing firms become
suppliers of generic intermediate food ingredients, such as glucose, syrups, proteins, carbo-
hydrates, fats, and flavours, which downstream firms reconstitute into food products for final
consumption. … Manufacturers can vary their composition according to the relative costs of
different raw material ingredients, nutritional factors, or other criteria. (Goodman, Sorj, and
Wilkinson 1987, 87)
These trends undoubtedly continue; as Lang (2010, 88) puts it, emphasizing the role of food
retailers and the increasing vulnerability of the food system to crisis, ‘power and capital
have moved off the land’ (see also Van der Ploeg 2010).
A second, related tendency in substitutionism is to reduce agriculture’s role to the pro-
vision of simplified products for industrial input, in line with the increased role of proces-
sing technologies, as opposed to agriculturally based labor (e.g., margarine industrially
manufactured with interchangeable vegetable oils, instead of butter). Agricultural products
broken down into their component parts can be variously recombined to make ‘derived’
food products rather than serving as food products themselves (Goodman, Sorj, and Wilk-
inson 1987, 87). The nature-based perishability of agricultural products may also be
reduced through such recombination. Substitutionism also describes how this logic can
be taken one step further by altogether replacing agriculturally- or biologically-derived
products with synthetic substitutes. This, of course, completely eliminates the agricultural
sector’s involvement with and the role of agriculturally based labor in the provision of par-
ticular products (e.g., latex instead of rubber, nylon and rayon instead of silk). Through each
of these processes, industrial activity accounts for a growing percentage of ‘value added’ in
the commodity chains of particular, flexible crops, while agricultural products are distanced
from their basis in nature and agricultural labor.
The reduction of agricultural products to simple industrial inputs resonates strongly
with the emergence of flex crops. Only when agriculture is seen as or made to be a
source for industrial inputs is crop flexing possible. It is these dynamics of substitutionism
that pave the way for variably flexing corn into ethanol, animal feed products, high fructose
corn syrup (HFCS), bio-plastics or food products. Some corn ethanol refineries, for
example, can make either HFCS or corn ethanol and sell by-products to livestock industries.
This infrastructure and these arrangements of capital make food fungible with non-food
products, creating the possibility for corn’s status as industrial input to trump its status
as food. If the market for corn ethanol is strong, for example, corn goes to ethanol.
These decisions need not be made with global food security in mind. Most significantly,
the power to flex crops and the location of and benefits from crop flexing reside with
agri-industry, a situation that emerged from the political economic circumstances described
here. These circumstances, specifically, are ones in which agriculturally based labor and
nature are appropriated as tools for agri-industrial accumulation. As Goodman, Sorj, and
Wilkinson (1987, 138–39) put it, the ‘cumulative effect of this tendency is to obscure
the specificity or “identity” of rural commodities, reinforcing the long-run movement of
substitutionism to reduce the share of agriculture and land in the value added generated
by the food system’. Thus, flex crops provide flexibility to industry, which is likely to
benefit from increasing the value added under its control.
Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson (1987) extended their discussion of substitutionism
toward biofuel production, explaining it as a component of a then-emerging trend toward
‘bio-industrialization’. Bio-industrialization refers most specifically to industrial application
124 Sean Gillon
of genetic engineering to fermentation and enzymatic and other biological processes directed
toward the creation of new, proprietary industrial products and technologies. The concept can
also be situated as one component of contemporary ‘bio-economies’ (see Ponte and Birch
2014). These engineered biological processes have important and potentially lucrative appli-
cations in flexing food crops into fuel – from corn ethanol fermentation to developing
microbial and other methods for breaking down plant cell walls into cellulosic ethanol, or
manufacturing bio-plastics (see Iles and Martin 2013). Indeed, in the case of recently emer-
ging bio-economies, the biological production processes for transforming biomass into fuel
were the targets of major public and private investments, with government programs and
funding serving to induce industry development; the oil industry, among others, invested
in research and development in biomass to biofuel conversion technologies (Carolan 2010;
Tyner 2010). As described by bio-industrialization, ‘the ultimate prize is domination and pro-
prietary ownership of the scientific knowledge and process engineering technology required
to control the complex biological reactions and microbial activities involved in food [and fuel]
manufacture’ (Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson 1987, 138). Borras et al. (2015) also highlight
research and development investments and intellectual property as a key area for future
research and advocacy around flex crops.
Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson’s (1987) analysis is extremely insightful in the context
of flex crops. In describing processes of appropriationism and substitutionism, the authors
point to central questions about the distribution of value, ownership and control in agricul-
tural product production, processing and consumption, as well as about the center for profit
and the position of labor and nature in the value chain. How flex crops develop and where
their benefits accrue depend on these dynamics and relationships. This analysis also illus-
trates the political economic development of crop fungibility, upon which crop flexing is
premised. A crop’s technical ability to be fungible among uses is determined by its multi-
pleness; a crop’s flexibleness, however, is mediated by agri-industrial relationships with
social decisions about whether to flex crops based, primarily, on price. As such, crop
flexing is dependent on the relative exchange values of particular crop uses – indeed,
flexing is seen as a strategy for mitigating risk of and profiting from fluctuating and volatile
prices in agri-industrial markets. In synthesis, crop flexing is a strategy for accumulation
based on a crop’s multipleness and flexibleness, which is undergirded by price-based
notions of value.
Value as price is not, however, all that is being exchanged when crops are flexed. Crop
use, the material basis of survival for many, is also exchanged. In crop flexing, it is possible
for the use of crops as food to be subordinated to the use of crops for other purposes,
depending upon the exchange values of particular agricultural products. These arrange-
ments may ignore the value of food and agricultural products in social context, thus obscur-
ing the necessity of using agricultural products as food and, along with it, the material
politics of survival (see Heynen 2006). Those without means to produce their own food,
to express values as prices (via money), or to contest the dominance of value as price
and argue for food’s non-price, social-ecological, cultural and material values, will lose.
With food and energy crops fungible, rising energy prices mean rising food costs and
that the food needs of the poor may be abandoned for the energy (or bio-plastics) desires
of the rich (Sage 2013, 75, see McMichael 2009). In short, price is a poor governor of
agri-food systems as it leads to crisis (see Sage 2013, 73). Thus, it is essential that research
and advocacy efforts bear in mind that flex crops (by definition) are an abstraction from par-
ticular agricultural crops’ socially and ecologically based use value as food and as an embo-
diment of labor and nature. The task then, for research and advocacy, is to scrutinize not
particular transactions, but the social-ecological and political economic conditions under
The Journal of Peasant Studies 125
which such transactions are made possible, as described here. I draw these points out in the
next three sections on the emergence of flex crops under conditions of crisis.
Managing growing agricultural supplies also has a consequence for the politics of value
and farmer organizing in the US agri-food system, an analytical point derived from focusing
on value and the position of labor in the agri-food system. In short, US supply crises and the
associated evolution of agricultural policy and politics have contributed to a shift in farmer
organizing away from class-based politics and toward commodity-based advocacy, with
farmers actively seeking markets for their commodities (McConnell 1953). Farmers,
leading up to New Deal policies, organized around their class-based interest against indus-
trial domination of agriculture, and farmers benefited from state support in New Deal pol-
icies. Systematic efforts of agricultural organizations interested in maximizing commodity
production emerged, however, to dismantle New Deal planning reforms. McConnell (1953)
called the process of aligning farmer interests along commodity lines via policy reform and
persuasion ‘commodityism’. Commodity-based interests, rooted in industrializing agricul-
ture’s evolving regional specializations and regional ‘social contracts’ (FitzSimmons 1990),
vied for power and moved agricultural policy’s focus from state intervention via production
controls and price support toward free market-based governance principles and maximizing
commodity production (Winders 2009). These efforts largely succeeded, further diminish-
ing state capacity to manage agricultural markets and meet rural development and other
public objectives, such as redressing racial inequality and re-democratizing agricultural
planning processes (see Gilbert 2003, 2009).
A key outcome of these processes is that farmers now advocate with industry on behalf
of their commodity, rather than together, as a class, to take back value in commodity chains
from industrial interests. Taken together with increasing agricultural productivity and
industrial efforts to pursue substitutionist strategies, US farmers have further ceded the
opportunity to collectively renegotiate agri-food system ownership and value distribution,
which remain central themes in the development of crop flexing strategies. Farmers may be
The Journal of Peasant Studies 127
able to advocate for markets for the commodity they produce and benefit from absolute
increases in its use (as corn growers did from ethanol), but under these political circum-
stances, it is more difficult to reset the terms of debate over agri-food system ownership
and value distribution to capture a larger share of the value of products sold. Interests
promoting particular, flexible commodities reinforce the trend of commodity-based social
arrangements in US agriculture that pit fractions of capital against each other, splitting
farmer interests and commitments in the process. Baines (forthcoming), for example,
describes how grain growers, commodity traders and processors have benefited from
increased US corn ethanol production at the expense of the livestock sector (see Figure 1
on US corn use patterns). These dynamics illustrate the crucial role the status of labor in
the agri-food system may play in flex crop development. US farmers’ political engagements,
in large part, have shifted to reflect their commodity interests, rather than their collective inter-
ests, as is emphasized internationally in food sovereignty movements along with important
questions about agri-food systems’ gender, race and other socio-cultural arrangements.
There are, however, important and growing exceptions to engagement with commodity-
rather than class-based politics in the US (see, for example, Brent and Kerssen 2014).
Clearly, this situation may be different and consequential in other contexts. Thus, engaging
the nature of organizing and advocacy in agriculture may be fruitful in future inquiry and
action around flex crops.
A changing corn ethanol industry, which began as soon as automobiles existed, and
corn flexing, in general, can be understood in the context of this history of US agricultural
policy and politics. As agricultural production and policy leaned toward productivism and
managing its consequences, so too have the principles and practices animating ethanol pro-
duction. In its early stages, when the agricultural sector’s political economic power was on
par with that of industry, ethanol production’s purposes were markedly different than they
are today. Flexing crops between food, feed and industrial (fuel) uses was seen as a method
to diversify markets for farmers and improve the ability of farms to satisfy local markets for
fuels and their own fuel needs. This was, emphatically, not a tool for industry profitability
and flexibility. Again, farmers, as a class, saw their interests in direct conflict with industrial
interests, and advocated on behalf of ethanol and agriculture’s place in the economy. For the
oil industry, without the opportunity to invest in the biological and genetic engineering of
flex crops, ethanol simply represented a product in direct competition with their own. As
Carolan (2010) puts it, the oil industry can accommodate an alternative fuel, but not an
alternative to fuel.
The changing position and organization of labor in agri-industrial, flex crop supply
chains is well illustrated by the case of corn ethanol. Many of the first ethanol refineries
were cooperatively owned rather than industry-owned enterprises, even in the second
half of twentieth century. The US government backed small plants, specifically, during
the ethanol boom of the 1970s and early 1980s; in 1984, at least 163 refineries were in oper-
ation, many of them cooperatively financed and owned by farmers. By 1990, however, due
to the contraction of farm economies via supply crises in the 1980s, only 56 refineries
remained. As smaller, cooperatively owned biorefineries shut down, agri-industrial interests
began investing in ethanol production to increase flexibility in their HFCS operations;
Archer Daniels Midland controlled 75 percent of the ethanol market by 1990 (Morris
2005; Crooks and Dunn 2005; Carolan 2010; Gillon 2012). Farmer-owned ethanol
plants rebounded in the 1990s until standard plant size increased significantly and new
actors began to enter the business with the renewed interest in biofuel production that
came in the 2000s. In 2005, 46 percent of US biorefineries were locally or cooperatively
owned, but this percentage was halved as early as 2009 (EPA 2006; RFA 2009; RFA
128 Sean Gillon
2014). Ethanol plant ownership moved away from cooperative ventures and toward inves-
tor-owned biorefineries where profits are made by speculating on the biorefinery’s value,
rather than by the sale of ethanol (Morris 2005). Although crop flexing may create
market opportunity for some commodity-based interests, the distribution of value and flexi-
bility in crop flexing depends on the ownership of flex crop infrastructure and technology.
This, in turn, depends on the ability of producers to organize around common interests and
beyond particular commodities, and again points to the importance of engaging the status
and organization of labor in analyses of flex crops.
In the US, flexing corn into ethanol is closely tied to a policy history of removing supply
management strategies in favor of maximizing crop production and finding or creating new
markets (see Winders 2009). This agricultural policy response to over-supply crises can
lead to food crises, especially under changing market conditions where crops can
become highly valued for particular uses and use values can be exchanged. Following
the logics of appropriationism and substitutionism, whether or not to flex crops has,
despite efforts to produce more sustainable biofuels, for example, become a technical ques-
tion guided by fractions of capital competing over the ‘value added’ in food and agricultural
supply chains. This logic can operate without concern for food availability outcomes or the
potential for these technologies to distribute social benefits in agri-food systems, creating
systemic and regular food crisis risk. This section has described how flexing crops may
not add value for producers, in general, and benefits will be uneven. Again, this crucially
depends on the distribution of value in flex crop commodity chains, which, in turn,
depends on producers’ ability to organize with the objective of value redistribution in agri-
culture. The tendencies of agriculture-industry relationships, as well US farm politics,
policy and production strategies, have led to a situation where industry involved with agri-
culture can be very clearly articulated as the answer to the question ‘Flexible for whom and
for whose benefit?’ Here, the position of agricultural labor is marginalized relative to indus-
trial processes. As the status of agricultural labor is marginalized, producers lose the ability
to strategize around and benefit from variable allocation of crops to multiple uses; instead,
industry decides and receives a growing share of the value added. And with the advent of
new, proprietary flex cropping seed and conversion technologies, the source of profit has
further shifted to the appropriation of biological processes under bio-industrialization.
Answers to these questions in other contexts may be different and are certainly not inevi-
table; as such, the questions deserve analytical attention in the context of agri-industrial
relations in future research and advocacy around flex crops.
this section, exploring US flex crops’ connections with the financial sector and land and
infrastructure investment, I position flex crops as one multi-dimensional component of a
fix for broader crises of accumulation. Examining connections between flex crops, farmland
and infrastructure, I indicate, again, how crop-flexing investments entailing the exchange of
use values may undermine the importance of agricultural production for specific, socially
mediated use values.
The over-supply crises in US agri-food systems explained above are a sector-specific
example of more generalized crises of accumulation, which occur when profitable outlets
for capital are diminished (see Harvey 2006 [1982]). As many scholars have recently
explained, agri-food systems are connected to crises of accumulation in other sectors as
a target for the development of new investment opportunities. Indeed, biofuel production,
the most dominant recent form of crop flexing, is part of a larger configuration of political
economic dynamics and governance agendas. The creation and maintenance of ‘bio-econ-
omies’ is a prime example of a response to multiple crises and part of what gives shape to
contemporary crop flexing (see Ponte and Birch 2014). In short, flex crop agendas connect
to multiple sectors, providing ways to address more generalized crises of accumulation.
Here, I address specific dimensions of crises and their flex crop-related responses by
drawing on recent analyses of the US case organized into the following sub-sections: (1)
commodity financialization and speculation, (2) flex crop infrastructure development and
investment, and (3) the financialization of and investment in land and agricultural
operations.
Financialization and financial investment in agri-food systems have a long and far-
reaching history (see Isakson 2014). While crop flexing is not the only cause of speculation,
flex crops do create enhanced market opportunity for commodity use and, thus, investment
(see Cotula 2012; Sage 2013). In short, flex crops and associated investment opportunities
may draw capital toward commodity markets. The factors that push capital away from other
investments are also equally important in the contemporary context as they illustrate
how agri-food systems are connected to broader crises that strengthen the action of flex
crops to draw speculative investments and impact global food security. The collapse of
the US housing market is a prime example; as investors looked away from housing, they
looked toward other markets for investment opportunity, such as markets for agricultural
commodities (see Isakson 2014). Flex crops seem to have enhanced the attractiveness
of commodities markets for speculative investment; the extent to which flex cropping
increases agri-food system investments, changing the distribution of decision-making
power and value, should be engaged by future analyses. Thus, a key empirical question
to consider in analyses of flex crops is: to what extent does crop flexing provide the oppor-
tunity for enhanced speculative investment and agri-food system financialization versus
provide additional flexibility in and control over markets by the producers and consumers
of those crops?
The evolution of the ethanol industry into one dominated by large plants where investors profit
not from the sale of ethanol, but from receiving the appreciated value of the plants when they
are sold, challenges policy makers who are trying to address agricultural, as well as energy,
The Journal of Peasant Studies 131
objectives. … The rise of large absentee-owned plants … concerns many. They significantly
restrict the possibility of widespread farmer ownership and control.
consideration’. But, as Fairbairn (2014) points out, it is not institutions of financial capital
alone seeing opportunities for value capture based on land speculation. Agri-industrial
interests that once avoided expensive and relatively financially unproductive ‘sunk costs’
in land and nature-based, risk-laden investment in agricultural production (leaving those
risks to be borne by the producers of simplified industrial inputs) are now becoming inter-
ested in land’s capacity to serve as a financial asset. As land has been financialized, it has
become increasingly popular among investors for its productive capacity (Fairbairn 2014).
Land can produce a commodity, in addition to providing investment returns through
generalized increases in land prices. Some of these commodities are flex crops, tied into
multiple potential market outlets, which only serves to strengthen the appeal to invest in
land for its use value, particularly when that use value can be exchanged via crop flexing.
Through financialization and speculation in both commodities and land markets, use
and exchange values have been further separated and obfuscated, so much so in the case
of flex crops that use values can be exchanged in efforts to maximize value capture.
And, through both commodities and land speculation, a new and distinct class of capital
has entered the agri-food system. Finance capital is not intimately invested in or tied to pro-
duction processes, but it benefits from them and determines the conditions of production, or
the social relationships that transform labor and nature into use, then exchange, and then
exchanged use value. In this scenario, it is easy to image how market-based allocation of
resources could wind up misallocating resources to such an extent that basic needs go rou-
tinely unmet. Simply put, decisions about the fate of agricultural products have been
severed from intended uses and needs, and are increasingly mediated by the concerns of
financial capital. The full consequences of these changes are uncertain. Isakson (2014)
points to the marginalization of agri-food system labor, among other issues; Fairbairn
(2014) points to the potential for increased volatility in land markets; Clapp (2014)
points to a loss of agri-food system transparency and accountability; Gunnoe (2014)
points to the possibility of a land bubble bursting. In all cases, any future analyses of
flex crops should engage these dynamics, asking whether and how crop flexing contributes
to the financialization of the agri-food system.
the micro-politics of crop flexing decisions may serve to illuminate key policy, political
economic and social-ecological dynamics, and inform future research and advocacy
around flex crops.
In the US, GHG reduction is the expressed purpose of biofuel production, which is
regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) via the Congressionally-man-
dated Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) codified under the Clean Air Act. Initial production
mandates were based on assumptions that replacing gasoline with biofuels was sure to
reduce GHG emissions and that crops would be abundant and cheap or over-supplied.
As corn ethanol production increased, however, negative social and ecological conse-
quences related to massive and rapid land use change and rising food prices became
evident. Critics, reacting to these consequences, questioned US biofuel production’s
ability to reduce GHGs and, in response, the US EPA updated the RFS to require that par-
ticular biofuels meet GHG reduction thresholds relative to their fossil fuel counterparts
(Gillon 2010; Bailis and Baka 2011). To ensure compliance, EPA conducted lifecycle ana-
lyses (LCAs) of particular biofuels’ production and use.
Proper GHG-accounting methodologies in LCAs became a centerpiece of the debate
around US biofuel production. This regulatory mechanism became a means to challenge
continued increased crop flexing into biofuels for multiple reasons, with critics arguing
that the RFS should be waived given that biofuel production actually increases GHG emis-
sions. Biofuels’ critics secured a victory when the EPA’s first draft of biofuel LCAs found
that neither corn ethanol nor soy-based biodiesel would qualify as legitimate, GHG-redu-
cing biofuels under the RFS. Industry advocates challenged these EPA findings and ulti-
mately succeeded in maintaining policy support for these biofuels, despite multiple EPA
determinations that biofuel production increased food prices, impaired water quality,
reduced wildlife habitat and only marginally contributed to GHG emissions and energy
security goals (Stuart and Gillon 2013). Through this process and its epistemological
approach, the LCA-based regulatory framework transitioned from a promising method
for critics to curtail biofuel production into a method for narrowing the scope of and par-
ticipants in an increasingly technical regulatory debate (Gillon 2014). This shift evidenced
the capacity of interested industry to lobby and conduct technical analyses on biofuels’
behalf. This process also further distanced agri-food system governance from agricultural
products’ basis in labor and nature and the relative merits of their use value (i.e., as food
or fuel, or for GHG reduction).
Outside of challenges to US biofuel production’s foundational rationale of GHG
reduction, the RFS indicates that a production waiver can be granted for two other
reasons: that renewable fuels production would ‘severely harm the economy or environ-
ment’ or that there is ‘inadequate domestic supply’ (Regulation of fuels, 42 U.S.C. 7545
(o)). In the remainder of the section, I discuss examples of petitions to the EPA to waive
biofuel mandates based on each of these rationales. Note that considerations of harm to
the economy or environment gesture toward the importance of biofuels’ and other commod-
ities’ basis in nature and labor and indicate the limits of bio-industrialization. That is, if the
value of flexing corn into ethanol undermines the basis of its use value and the basis of its
production in nature and labor, production can be waived. EPA deliberation over requests to
waive RFS production requirements based on these criteria are illustrative cases in the con-
temporary politics of flexing that demonstrate how decisions about crop flexing can be
made and evidence flex crops and corn ethanol, in particular, to be an environmental fix.
Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a petition to the EPA in 2007 requesting that biofuel
mandates be waived due to the economic hardship they caused in the livestock sector (see
Gillon 2010). As corn prices rose, livestock producers were increasingly unable to
134 Sean Gillon
profitably manage their livestock operations. Again in 2012, in the wake of a drought, live-
stock-producing US states requested that EPA waive the RFS. EPA (2012, 2), however,
denied the waiver request, stating that it was
highly unlikely that waiving the RFS volume requirements will have a significant impact on
ethanol production or use in the relevant time frame that a waiver could apply (the 2012–
2013 corn marketing season) and therefore little or no impact on corn, food, or fuel prices.
Of course, the narrow ‘relevant time frame’ is key to the findings of the analysis. Indeed, in
the wake of rising feed prices, livestock herd sizes were reduced. As noted, recent research
has shown that grain producers and traders have increased their market power and captured
more value in agricultural markets relative to their livestock industry counterparts (Baines,
forthcoming). A similar complaint could have been lodged citing rising food prices and
would likely have been similarly denied. And, in the case of environmental harm, although
EPA has documented the environmental risks of biofuel production to be serious, they have
initiated no action to address these, nor, to date, have they altered their GHG-focused regu-
latory mechanism (Gillon 2014).
US EPA did, however, recently provisionally agree to waive biofuel mandates in
response to oil industry waiver requests based on a finding of ‘inadequate domestic’
supply (EPA 2014). The quantity of corn-based ethanol to be produced in 2014 was
reduced from 14.4 to 13 billion gallons, even lower than the 2013 renewable fuels pro-
duction mandate of 13.8 billion gallons. Oil industry representatives successfully argued
that current US biofuel infrastructure has inadequate capacity to absorb continued
ethanol production. Gasoline refiners are currently required to purchase ethanol in
volumes based on the amount of gasoline they produce. This ethanol is blended into gaso-
line at levels of 10 percent (E10), 15 percent (E15), and 85 percent (E85). Using gasoline
that contains more than 10 percent ethanol has not, however, been approved as safe for all
engines. Most gasoline stations sell only E10, limiting the total volume of ethanol that can
be used based on the amount of gasoline sold; this is known as the ‘blend wall’ in the
ethanol industry and is variously estimated to be between 13 and 13.1 billion gallons for
2014. The oil industry argued that because the infrastructure (e.g., gasoline stations and
car engines) was not sufficient to create adequate demand, production requirements (i.e.,
their requirements to purchase and blend ethanol) should be waived. This will prevent
the oil industry from having to purchase ethanol at what are increasingly high prices
(Irwin and Good 2014).
Biofuel supporters, on the other hand, have unsuccessfully argued that more infrastruc-
ture should be developed and that the US Congress, in writing the RFS, intended
‘inadequate supply’ to refer to biofuels supply and not infrastructure-dependent demand
or use (RFA 2013). Public comments are now being considered. Independent of the
outcome, EPA’s preliminary findings demonstrate a loose interpretation of the RFS’s
‘inadequate supply’ provision that satisfies the oil industry’s request. EPA’s decision to
waive production requirements may demonstrate their recognition of the multiple unin-
tended consequences of US biofuel production (e.g., food, ecological and land use
crises). In this case, the waiver request by the oil industry provides an opportunity to
curtail production increases for other reasons, and to use the oil industry’s formidable pol-
itical weight to support their position against the requests of biofuel supporters, including
agri-industrial interests. Or, perhaps, EPA simply let a powerful oil industry have what they
wanted in the broader interest of keeping gasoline prices low; oil industry did indicate in
comments to EPA that if their waiver request were denied they would coordinate action
The Journal of Peasant Studies 135
that would have the consequence of increasing gasoline prices. In any case, economic or
environmental harm, the categories under which rising food prices and flex crop-generated
inequality would be assessed, has not been a persuasive rationale for waiving mandates to
the EPA as a state agency caught between impulses to facilitate and regulate capital
accumulation (see Robertson and Wainwright 2013).
The rationale that did prevail rests on the logic that biofuels are not supportable with
policy because the US is not consuming enough gasoline. That biofuels production is pre-
dicated on gasoline consumption reveals their status as a fix, or response to the multiple
crises discussed above, that does not undermine, but enhances, the foundations of accumu-
lation (cf. Castree 2008; Gillon 2010). Here, we see that regulatory decisions about whether
or not US crops should be flexed are firmly planted in a frame of exchange values, with
substitutionism and bio-industrialization providing the platform for continued accumulation
through the exchange of use value. As described, petitions that biofuel mandates be relaxed
because of economic harm, namely their contribution to rising food and feed prices, which
more directly consider agricultural crops’ use value and values basis in labor and nature,
were denied; likewise for petitions based on findings of environmental harm (see Gillon
2014). This brief explanation of recent negotiations over whether or not crops should be
flexed in the US illustrates the importance of attending to the micro-politics of flexing
that underpin decisions about the use of agricultural produce. Such an analysis reveals
the locus of power in decision-making, illuminating the constellation of interests and
actors in these conversations, as well as the logics behind crop flexing.
6. Conclusion
Flexible allocation of crops among food and non-food uses is one key proximate driver of
recent, crisis-ridden agri-food systems dynamics. As a contribution to this collection on flex
crops, I have attempted to outline some key analytical questions and frames through a prelimi-
nary analysis of US corn flexing. In so doing, I situated crop flexing as exchanging use values.
This analytical lens keeps focus on flex crops’ role in reconfiguring or re-instantiating patterns
of ownership and control and the positions of labor and nature in the agri-food system. To
answer the question ‘Flexible for whom?’, I highlighted the importance of understanding ten-
dencies in agri-industrial relationships, as explained by scholars of agricultural political
economy. In the US, these agri-industrial tendencies, which move value and control away
from agricultural production and toward industrial interests, albeit unevenly across agricultural
sectors, limit the distribution of flexibility and value in crop flexing – the answers to the ques-
tion ‘Flexible for whom?’ This situation may be different in other places, but this analysis illus-
trates the importance of scrutinizing the political economic and social-ecological
circumstances that facilitate large-scale crop flexing and determine its beneficiaries.
I explored US crop flexing through the multiple agri-food system-related crises, from
which it emerges and to which it contributes. In the third section, on supply crises in US
agriculture, I described how flex crops provide new markets for agricultural commodities,
which producers and investors hope will reduce risk of over - supply crises, but which run
the risk of contributing to food crises. I further explained how the answer to the question
‘Flexible for whom?’ depends on the role of labor and the social capacity to influence
value’s distribution in flex crop supply chains. In the US, ethanol production has moved
its emphases of organization and control from farmer cooperatives to agricultural and oil
industries via appropriationism, substitutionism and what McConnell (1953) calls ‘commo-
dityism’. Under commodityism, farmers transitioned from class-based politics that united
interests against industry toward commodity-based advocacy where they sought to increase
136 Sean Gillon
the market for their product, maximizing the exchange value of their crops relative to
others’. In the US, this history informs the dynamics of long-established, but recently rein-
vigorated, crop flexing. While crop flexing may create value for some agricultural interests,
farmer ability to organize against industry has been compromised. Again, answers to the
question ‘Flexible for whom and for whose benefit?’ may be different in other situations;
and the answers, which can be informed by research and advocacy on the characteristics
of farmer and agri-industrial organization in crop flexing, are certainly not inevitable.
In the fourth section, on broader crises of accumulation that contribute to agri-food
system financialization and the emergence of flex crops, I explored flex crops’ connections
to commodity speculation, land investment, infrastructure development, and research and
development funding. I described how use value is subordinated to exchange value
through financialization and crop flexing, further distancing agricultural products and
their uses from their basis in nature and labor. While it is unclear what effect flex crops
will have on further agri-food system financialization, a key question to consider is ‘To
what extent does crop flexing provide the opportunity for enhanced speculative investment
and agri-food system financialization versus provide additional flexibility in and control
over markets by the producers and consumers of those crops?’ In the fifth section, I demon-
strated how US corn flexing serves as an ‘environmental fix’ for climate change: a hope that
biofuels will maintain opportunities for accumulation and liquid fuel consumption while
reducing GHG emissions. I described how EPA has provisionally waived renewable fuel
mandates due, in effect, to inadequate gasoline consumption; the underlying logic is that
the US cannot continue to reduce GHGs through corn ethanol production (if it does at
all) because the US does not consume enough gasoline. This discussion further illustrates
the importance of substitutionism and bio-industrialization in providing a basis for crop
flexing and facilitating this ‘fix’. Highlighting recent negotiations over whether or not to
flex corn into ethanol, I demonstrated the importance of research focus on the micro-politi-
cal negotiations around exchanging use values, or crop flexing, for revealing effective
points of leverage for advocacy efforts.
Although crop flexing has existed, in practice, for as long as agriculture, the new context
of global food, agricultural, financial and climate crises creates new conditions for the pro-
duction and use of agricultural products. Insights from agricultural political economy and
analytical perspectives that keep labor, nature and value in clear sight can be useful for
explaining flex crops’ emergence, contemporary dynamics and likely consequences. The
approach outlined here helps illuminate the new power to exchange use values through
flex crops. Given the answers to the question ‘Flexible for whom?’, in the case of US
corn, there is a possibility for actors and institutions, once distant from food production
and consumption, to play a large role in determining whether any food gets produced at
all. Surely, it is far-fetched to think that any group or social institution would succeed in
putting all the world’s food into gas tanks or somewhere other than mouths, but much of
the world has already felt the effects of food crises in the new, flexible and financialized
agri-food system. Patterns of crop flexing and use are, however, far from inevitable. Engaging
the future of flex crops may prove to be an important topic for agri-food system research and
advocacy efforts and a key analytical lens for thinking about the positions of labor and nature
and the distribution of ownership, value and control in the agri-food system.
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to the Transnational Institute and the International Institute for Social Studies in The
Hague for organizing a workshop on flex crops in January 2014; conversations started there
The Journal of Peasant Studies 137
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Sean Gillon is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Systems and Society at Marylhurst
University. Email: sgillon@marylhurst.edu